Park Street Deli Antipasti Pitted Olives
Everyone in my family is a little different when it comes to how much they’re willing to experiment with different foods. On one end is my wife, who is willing to try all kinds of foods and is probably the broadest of our family in terms of what she likes. On the other end is one of our kids, who is pretty traditional and specific about her tastes. I’m probably in the middle.
One area where one of my daughters and I are different is olives. My wife isn’t a fan, but my daughter and I like them. When an appetizer tray rolls out at any occasion, there’s no doubt who in the family will be going for the olives.
Imagine our intrigue, then, when my daughter and I spotted an olive-heavy everyday buy during a recent Aldi trip. We couldn’t pass this one up.
Park Street Deli Antipasti Pitted Olives are an Aldi Regular Buy. You can find them on store shelves all the time. We found them in the store’s refrigerated section, next to the artisanal cheeses and other charcuterie-type fare. It was part of a mixed case of similarly packaged items that included Kalamata olives, a Jubilee Assortment of olives, and Greek Salad.
At the time of this post, the Antipasti and the other options in the mixed case all came in 7-ounce clamshell packages and cost $3.35, or about 47.9 cents per ounce. All are perishable and should be kept refrigerated, so keep that in mind when buying them. Also note the best if used by date on the package.
The Antipasti comes with green olives, black olives, provolone cheese cubes, button mushrooms, and red peppers. Nutritionally, each one-ounce serving contains 80 calories, 8 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, and 240 milligrams of sodium. Each of those represents about 6-10% of your recommended daily value.
We had some annoyances with the packaging. We found the plastic film covering the main compartment to be difficult to remove without the aid of scissors. What’s more, once the film was off, the oil was seemingly everywhere, and it seeped out of the clamshell if it was tilted too much. We ended up transferring everything to a dish with an airtight seal.
As for what was inside? I liked it. The tastes are different, but the flavors meld together well, mixing salty and olive and a little sweet. I think it’s a nifty collection. My olive-loving daughter didn’t like it quite as much: she liked the green olives but was less enthusiastic about the black olives. Both my daughter and I thought the oil was okay, if a bit messy. Unlike olives on an appetizer plate, we found a fork rather than fingers to be the best tool.
The Verdict:
Our olive afficionados were a little divided on this one. I liked the mix and found it to be a good blend of flavors, while the other olive fan in my family didn’t like the black olives here as much as she likes black olives in other contexts. The olive oil makes for more mess than we expected, leading us to move the mix out of the clamshell packaging and into a better container, but overall this might be worth a look if you like olives and are wanting to try something different.
