So last week’s mondo-Italiano food and wine night apparently featured more than just some good olasz eats and drinks. According to a follow-up on deluxe.hu, figures announced at the event show a dramatic increase in food and wine trade between Hungary and Italy, with Hungary getting the better end of the bargain. The piece quotes Csaba Horváth, head secretary of the National Council of Wine Communities, as saying that Hungary’s total food trade surplus with Italy was €144 million last year, up from €104 million in 2004, representing a jump of almost 40%.
While this impressive figure was not broken down by the different category of good, we suspect a nice hunk of it may represent the much-rumored, but little publicized, purchases of Hungarian hams and other pork products by Italian processors of luxury preserved meats. Yes, we are suggesting that some of the more famous “100% Italian” meat products you are plunking down big forints for are actually made from hús raised right here in Hungary. And no, we’re not going to complain about it, at least as long as the Italians are the only ones who seem to know how to take a Hungarian pig and turn it into something as good with melon slices as roast potatoes and garlic.
