The “tastes” thing is just their transparent excuse for peddling inferior products in Eastern Europe.
This article sums up pretty well my tastes on “ready” pesto.
Is that a joke? 
I’m not into Nutella, so I don’t know much about that.
Not a joke, and much more than Nutella.
Ingredients in food in Europe are a great argument. I tend to avoid the mass-product because they tend to forget quality for quantity. When it comes to sweets, then, the problem is bigger. I bet there are better producers of Gianduia chocolate or simply chocolate with hazelnuts in the Netherlands!
Here’s an article about it: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/eastern-europeans-tired-of-inferior-products-a-1182949.html
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There are, for me two problems:
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You can’t produce the same quality product everywhere. Only mass-food can, and it is not renowned for quality. You can’t produce genoan basil everywhere. And that’s good. When I go to a restaurant, I’m happy if they say: you cannot have this, we don’t have it’s over for today. It often means they use fresh ingredients from a non mass-production.
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Laws on food. Italy has strict rules on food quality. Other countries have not. Then maybe that’s the reason why the ingredients are different in Eastern Europe. We live in the capitalist free market, and then if could do something, somebody will do. Then it is the consumer that have to choose the best product (and the states have to write laws). I would be very happy if countries from Eastern Europe join our battles on quality on food and detailed labels on every product. Wait for CETA and TTIP to be agreed from Europe, and this probably will break every attempt to a honest and consumer-friendly quality production. On the other side instead we should implement laws on quality production.
Ahem … 
Even countries in eastern Europe have rules.
But that’s not the main problem: The tastes and the costs of the products/ingredients are different. Especially for the big companies like Nestle or Unilever money means everything.
What if he hasn’t the possibility to buy the best product?
I have no idea what the rules further east were prior to the EU, but EU food laws and regulations are already a pretty strict baseline.
I totally agree with you. And that’s why I wrote what I wrote.
The only way you can act on capitalist free market is to write laws that regulate it. If in Nutella sold in Eastern countries there is too much palm oil or cocoa butter, well let’s do a regulation for which a product registered with the same name as Nutella has to have the same ingredients everywhere in European Community. Let’s allow product to indicate on labels exactly what ingredients are and where they come from. In the free market, together with laws, only consumers can influence production, reacting and stopping buyin that product.
But don’t think that in Italy Nutella is good. It’s twenty years that I don’t buy it anymore. New little producers could arise, in Italy as in Poland for example, with more care for quality products and ingredients.
Freedom doesn’t consist in having the possibility to buy everything at the price we want. That’s a market illusion, and that’s good for Nestlè and Unilever, not for the rest of the people.
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@Gffp Somewhat related:
The European Commission has today adopted the new rules on labelling the origin of the primary ingredient in food which were endorsed by a vote by the Member States. The new regulation will ensure a high level of transparency, providing EU citizens with clear information about the origin of food sold on the EU market. Under the Regulation on food information to consumers (FIC), the origin of primary ingredient must be indicated if different from the origin of the food in order to not deceive consumers and to harmonise the presentation of such information. There will be a certain level of flexibility for food business operators in order to take into account the various methods of food processing. The legislation will apply from 1 April 2020.
More info promised here but it doesn’t seem to be there yet: Food information to consumers - legislation - European Commission
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Today I went to the biggest Italian supermarket in town: Centro Italia. They didn’t offer any Calabrian Chile Paste. They told me, that I could use Sugo all’Arrabbiata. And the only Barilla product they had was “Kit Pizza”. Their pasta brand was Divella.
They had good lunch however. We had nice, huge Sandwiches: Bologna and Bufalino.
On Monday I will try my luck at another big supermarket.
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Yes, it’s like a Calabrian Chili, but less spicy.
Well, they could seem similar but… they are not, apart from the spicyness. The calabrian chili pepper paste is made only with chili peppers (and oil, salt, garlic).
While the sugo all’arrabbiata is basically a tomato sauce enriched with chili peppers to spice up it. I love it btw, especially with penne rigate and fresh basil. 
That’s another good brand, from Apulia.
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If I get right what you mean with “calabrian pepper paste”, you are meaning a traditional sauce -as described by @Gffp- which is basically red peppers macerating in olive oil and vinegar.
Please somebody correct me if I am right, but this sauce, as far as I know, isn’t intended to prepare pasta. You should use a large amount of it, it would cost you a lot, and the result might be disappointing.
I’ve always eaten it on crostini as an appetizer. It is often sold in small fancy jars in gourmet shops, and sometimes might be expensive.
Lately has become more popular since some vendors had the funny (?!) idea of renaming it “Viagra calabrese”.
Maybe you can browse the internet for that name, I think you could find it in some online shops.
Sugo all’arrabbiata is a very different thing, as Gffp said. It is a variation of red tomato sauce for pasta: peppers insted of basil.
But I suggest you to learn how to prepare a base tomato sauce for pasta at home: once you learn that, you will prepare with no effort any variation of the base tomato sauce, and you won’t need 2/3 of the ready-to-use sauces you can find in shops (and your sauce will be better, too). I think you won’t have problems with it, since as far as I remember you are pretty advanced in cooking.
But, finally, I have a doubt… Maybe you weren’t referring to Viagra Calabrese… which doesn’t look like a paste in my opinion.
What resembles a paste to me is nduja (or anduia):
It is basically an extremely soft and extremely peppered salami.
So peppered that it tastes of pepper, and it has just a hint of meat. So soft that you can’t slice it, you just spread it on your bread.
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Thank you for your insights.
Actually I read in an American/Italian cookbook from Giada de Laurentiis that this is an essential for her kitchen, so I wanted that too.
I made a pretty good sauce once in the past, it took a lot of tomatoes but it was very nice and delicious. I learned about it in the Japanese TV show that visits Japanese wives in foreign countries. They visited a Japanese woman in Italy, her parents in law weren’t much fans of her tomato sauce.
So with the help of the program, they organized a teacher and showed her (and the viewers) step by step instructions to make tomato sauce. I need to find this specific show and write the recipe down to compare it with yours. 
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Hello y‘all!
Wanting to buy a manual pasta machine, so I came to this place to ask for your advice. 
Is the Marcato Atlas 150 really such a good thing? Or do you think that Gefu or Küchenprofi quality would be the same or close enough?
I ask because I want a Marcato, but I can’t find any store in Berlin, Germany where I can buy one. I could buy on Amazon of course but I want to reduce my online shopping footprint.
It’s just an illusion…
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I don’t know about the Marcato Atlas 150, I can only say it seems more advanced than the one used by my grandmother, who used it basically only to make tagliatelle. The fact that it is entirely built in Italy, which has a good manufacturing tradition, sounds good.
I also recommend Kuchenprofi products. Germany has a really good manufacturing quality too! I bought a nice cooking timer, and it still lasts, while some cheaper chinese products (no offence intended) broke soon. In the end I would have spent less if I just bought the better Kuchenprofi product, not to mention the ecological footprint.
I agree with you, and I salute you for that. It’s a very good thing to buy directly in stores: you can check the item with your own eyes, and have a real idea of it. I personally noted that, after I bought online some things which were different from what I expected (still being identical to the images shown). Buying in a store is a different thing, and I personally recommend it for everything, unless you cannot find anywhere near the item you look for. Or if you already know it and have used it with your own hands.
PS I checked for you.
Kuchenprofi produces a basic pasta machine, similar to that one used by my grandmother, and sells it directly on its own online shop, where it also sells the more advanced Marcato Atlas 150 (a partnership that confirms the good quality of both brands). You could call Kuchenprofi and ask if they, being a german company, sell them somewhere in stores near Berlin.
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Thank you so much for your research!
I found an Italian supermarket Centro Italia here in Berlin, and they had the Atlas 180. The number is higher, the quality must be too. I didn’t buy it because it didn’t feel right, and the cost was higher than I expected.
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