Food at nur Gutes means gourmet products from small artisanal producers
At nur Gutes, we gather gourmet food and delicacies from all over Europe: salted butter from Brittany, sugo from the Abruzzo region, tinned fish from the Bay of Biscay, plus spices, pasta, and chocolate. Everything comes from producers who have understood their craft for generations.
Food at nur Gutes means: gourmet delicacies with a known origin. Since 2002, we have been selecting delicacies in Nordhorn from producers whose names appear on the label – from fruit spreads from South Tyrol and balsamic vinegar from Modena to sardines that are placed in the tin by hand.
What makes a delicacy a delicacy
The word delicacy comes from the Latin delicatus, meaning fine and tender, and that is exactly what it is about: food produced with more care than everyday life requires.
Gourmet is the term for this same idea, and both refer less to a product category than to a mindset. The quality is determined by the method: harvesting at the right time, the patient process, the ingredient you can taste and name. A jar of preserved apricots can be a delicacy if the fruit was allowed to ripen on the mountain and someone picked it by hand.
Gourmet eating therefore begins long before the plate. It starts in fields, in bays, and in workshops where recipes are passed down through generations. Those who cook and preserve in this way have invested time that you can taste later. We gather exactly such producers in this category, from France and Italy, from Spain, Austria, and Germany.
From the breakfast jar to the fish tin
The food category is set up like a good gourmet shop, where every shelf tells its own story and you can drift from door to door.
It begins with the breakfast shelf featuring jams, honey, and nut creams. Standing at the very front is the apricot spread from Alpe Pragas, preserved in the Dolomites and one of the most purchased items in the entire shop. Right next to it are bread and butter, followed by vinegar and oil with cold-pressed olive oil and long-aged balsamic vinegar.
Things get savory with sauces and spices, from barbecue sauce to spice blends from the mill. The pasta, risotto, and sugo department covers the Italian evening. In the tinned and preserved section, Nuri sardines and pickled vegetables are waiting for their moment. For dessert, there are sweets and savory treats, from chocolate bars to salty licorice.
Because many producers work with the seasons, the range changes throughout the year, and a shelf may sometimes look emptier in the summer. Fine chocolate, for example, takes a break with us from May to September because it cannot handle the summer heat during shipping, and returns in autumn with a full selection. It is therefore always worth browsing, even if your pantry is still stocked.
Short list of ingredients, clear origin, good craftsmanship
You can recognize good gourmet food by three things: an ingredient list you can read aloud, an origin with a name, and a process that requires time.
The ingredient list of a delicacy reads like a shopping list: fruit, sugar, little else. The origin bears a place name, such as Modena or the Prags Valley. And behind the process is a person who stirs, selects, and tastes, or who waits, as with balsamic vinegar, which wanders through barrels made of changing woods over the years. Industrial goods standardize their batches; in an artisanal workshop, every harvest is allowed to taste a little different.
Some houses go a step further and treat their goods like vintners treat their grapes. The vintage sardines from La Perle des Dieux have their catch year on the tin, because good fish matures in the tin and every summer turns out differently. Such details are the difference between a stockpile and a delicacy.
Where butter, sugo, and bonito are at home
Behind the labels in this category are families whose craft is often older than their company name.
In Saint-Malo on the Breton coast, Jean-Yves Bordier took over a small dairy in 1985 and turned the manual kneading process, the malaxage, back into an art form. His butter was soon on the tables of star chefs like Guy Savoy and Alain Passard. At Maison Bordier, it is still kneaded on the plate today, longer in winter than in summer, using milk from local pasture-raised cows.
In Roccascalegna in the Abruzzo region, a farmer named Don Antonio was preserving his farm harvest in jars as early as the 1960s. His wife, Antonia, sold them at local weekly markets. Today, their son Nicola runs the business with his wife Paola and their sons Marco and Andrea. For the sugo from Don Antonio, the Francavillese, a fleshy pear tomato, is harvested in August and processed on the same day.
And in the Basque Country, Olasagasti has been putting fish in tins since 1923: founded by the Sicilian Salvatore Orlando, named after his wife Simona, and managed by his grandson Matteo. The pride of the house is the Bonito del Norte, the white tuna, caught individually with a hook and line when it moves close to the coast between June and October.
How to bring good food to the table
For a good dinner, a tin, some fresh bread, and a little time are enough, as gourmet food unfolds most clearly in simple dishes.
For a tapas evening, put jars and tins open on the table, along with bread and olives, and let everyone combine them themselves. A jar of sugo, fresh pasta, and grated cheese turn a Tuesday into a little celebration, and the Breton butter transforms even a slice of fresh bread into an appetizer.
If you are new here, just start simple: a tin of sardines, a jar of sugo, and a bar of dark chocolate. With that, a light supper, a pasta dinner, and the moment afterward are taken care of, and with the next purchase, the selection will grow on its own.
A pantry of tins and jars is the most relaxed form of hospitality. A good preserve waits patiently in the cupboard until guests ring the doorbell and opens faster than the oven preheats. Stored in a cool, dark place, many of these specialties will keep for months; opened jars belong in the refrigerator.
You can find what belongs in the glass in our drinks category, from wine to fine juices to lemonade with character.
Gourmet food as a gift for connoisseurs
Good food is easy to give as a gift because it doesn't need to be a specific size and never gathers dust in the cupboard unused.
A jar of apricots says as much for a housewarming as a dark chocolate from Bonnat does for a birthday. At Christmas, butter, sugo, and bonito become an entire evening in a box, and you can find ready-made ideas in our gift section, from a small token of appreciation to a large basket.
Those who give delicacies as gifts are ultimately giving an evening when they will be opened. We carefully pack everything from this category and deliver it throughout Germany so that it arrives just as it left the workshop. Browse through the shelves at your leisure and put together your own pantry, one good jar at a time.
