NEW YORK, N.Y. – If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere, they say of New York.
Whether or not the saying is true, the Big Apple does have a way of highlighting canola’s problems and potential.
You have only to walk around the city and ask a few questions.
Some people have heard about canola oil and think it’s great; others have heard little and don’t think of it at all.
There’s almost no canola oil on the shelves of the high-end Amish Market food store on Hudson Street at the edge of Manhattan’s financial district.
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But there are more than 150 types of olive oil and the olive oil stand is given a prominent place in the store, which caters to wealthy consumers.
This emphasis on olive oil makes sense, grocery manager Ovidio Bairam said, “because we are a gourmet market.”
The olive oil stand also holds other elegantly packaged oils, such as avocado, sunflower and safflower.
Canola oil is nowhere to be found on the stand, but it does exist in the store.
Two labels of canola oil are on a back shelf, out of the way, beside the lower quality, generic vegetable oil.
“I have not heard much here in the United States (about canola oil),” said Bairam.
“Sunflower oil, safflower oil and vegetable oil. That’s the most (that I hear about).”
A walk up Hudson, from the financial district to the middle of Greenwich Village, offered the chance for an unscientific survey of the grocery store profile that canola oil has in New York City.
At Morgan’s Market on the corner of Reade Steet, bottom shelves held two labels of canola oil, beside the corn oils. Well above them at eye level were 24 types of olive oil.
The small delis that appear on almost every block often carry only one type of oil, generally corn oil. This was true at the Ellen Food store at Spring Street and at Ray’s Deli at Barrow.
The canola oil industry’s dreams seemed to be met at the Health and Harmony food store, which describes itself as “A Fine Health Food Store,” at the corner of Grove Street.
There, along with the olive oil brands, were bottles of organic and non-organic canola oil, and even a can of spray-on canola oil. The olive oils had the eye-level shelves, but even though the canola was lower, it wasn’t on the bottom shelf.
An Italian store clerk said that canola oil “is very popular with people who want to be healthy.”
The shelves also contained peanut, sunflower and safflower oils.
Less choice was offered to consumers at the Rite Aid Pharmacy and Food Store at the corner of Christopher Street, where only one type of soybean oil was for sale.
The end of the unscientific grocery tour was at the Karen St. Deli, where the consumer had the choice of 15 different types of olive oil and no other vegetable oils.
But while the popularity of canola oil is mixed in the Manhattan grocery industry, far more awareness is shown by the cooking and restaurant trade, which appears to favour canola.
“I like canola a lot. I’m using more of it,” said Carla Palandrani, the owner of the Greenwich Village Bistro on Father Demo Square at Sixth Avenue.
She uses only extra virgin olive oil for her salads, because of olive oil’s rich flavour and consistency, but she uses an olive-canola oil blend when she needs oil as a food ingredient.
Palandrani uses canola and soybean oil for frying but prefers canola oil. She likes canola’s high smoke point, neutral flavour and versatility.
At one time she would buy semi-solid, prepared frying oil products, but doesn’t now because “it’s got that other junk in it,” she said about hydrogenation and additives.
“I never liked all those other words for things they add to it.”
Palandrani’s restaurant caters to discerning diners in Greenwich Village, so she pays attention to the qualities of the oils she uses, and doesn’t mind paying more for canola if it works well and is good for her customers.
Not all better restaurants use canola oil.
The cook at the Dano Restaurant on Fifth Avenue “knows of it, but he doesn’t use it,” a waitress said.
But at Punch, on Broadway, “the cook says he uses both olive oil and canola oil.”
New Yorkers are passionate about their food, and it isn’t hard to get an opinion from them about ingredients.
“I’m Italian, so I will always use olive oil,” said one of the Air Canada check-in staff at Newark airport, after discovering that most of the passengers on the morning flight to Winnipeg were members of the Canola Council of Canada, who had just finished a convention in New York City.
Her colleague had a different view.
“Canola is the best, healthiest oil. I always use it,” she said.
