As one of the UK’s leading food manufacturers, at Quattro Foods we pride ourselves on producing food products of the highest quality, and our loyal customers will attest to that. We serve high street chains, individual restaurants, the NHS, schools, the army and food service providers who, in turn, serve discerning and hungry customers – so there is no margin for error. The Quattro chefs aim to keep our customers happy, and our customers are only happy when their customers are eating the best food on the market. We aim to please.
One of the failsafe processes we have implemented to ensure only the best results, is our unwavering commitment to traditional – even old-fashioned – methods of food production. Any culinary aficionado will tell you that food produced by hand, with love, tastes far better than mass produced ‘convenience food.’
Our development chef Tony told us why Quattro Foods prides itself on cooking by hand.
Q. Why does Quattro Foods use traditional cooking methods?
We believe that by using traditional cooking methods for our recipes, we are taking good care of our carefully sourced ingredients and in turn, by creating wonderful recipes from them, we marry the ingredients and method together to achieve great results.
Q. What are these methods and how do they improve the product?
We use methods such as sweating down base ingredients like onions, together with seasonings and spices to release and draw out all the natural flavours, then, by adding ingredients such as stock, meat and vegetables and stirring with care when needed during the cooking, we achieve a great finished product.
Q. Will the ‘old fashioned way’ become obsolete as kitchen technology keeps improving?
We all have to move with the times and technological advances keep developing, but it is important to us to keep the hand cooked feel to our products, so we intend to keep it this way, even as equipment is phased out and replaced over its life span. No, we don’t see the “old fashioned way” disappearing from our kitchen.
Q. Does the food manufacturing industry as a whole use traditional methods?
There are other manufacturers who use traditional methods as we like to do, but there are many more that use modern technology and equipment in large quantities, but without what we feel is the personal and bespoke human touch.
Now you’ve heard how and why Quattro Foods puts so much time and devotion into food manufacturing, why not try our delicious products and pass them onto your equally discerning customers? We know from extensive experience and a vast amount of glowing feedback from satisfied customers, that our traditional cooking methods really do fulfil their promise of ultimate taste.
Much of the work of our development chefs requires research and a need to be on the pulse of changes and trends in the food production industry. We keep up to date with what our customers and the wider culinary consumer expect from their food producers. Increasingly, people who love food want to know that it’s been made by hand and with care.
As food giants embrace technology, their consumers look like they’re rejecting it when it comes to their culinary choices. The trend is veering towards small artisan producers, who use traditional methods of production to turn the freshest, most organic and ethical ingredients into delicious and popular food.
Street food is a growing international trend. Forget Michelin stars, foodies on a budget consume some of the most vibrant and tasty treats with their plastic forks and perceptive palettes. From Vietnamese to Colombian, and from Italian to Thai, these mouthwatering dishes are made with passion, by hand and with some of the most dated – yet effective- cooking methods on the planet.
London, and growing pockets of the rest of the UK, is crammed with food markets, most famously Borough Market – top of every tourist’s ‘to-do’ list and a favourite weekend hangout for the capital’s street food aficionados. The diverse collection of small producers delights obsessive foodies and includes such eclectic eateries as East Sussex cheesemakers Alsop & Walker, Cinnamon Tree Bakery for handmade biscuits, De Calabria, food from southern Italy and Food and Forest, sustainably sourced sweet and savoury nuts.
These specialist food manufacturers, amongst hundreds of others, come together every weekend in a celebration of culinary joy. Sharing recipes, passion and a love of incredible food, each small business brings a different culture or food group to the market. Freshness, sustainability and premium taste is key for each of these vendors as well as for their customers – the tens of thousands of foodies who visit London’s iconic market every week.
Each of these businesses will tell you proudly that one of their key success factors is their traditional hand production method. Selling produce far-removed from supermarket fare, the appeal of these retailers is their unique product and the small scale and manual ethos of their manufacture. They sell artisan produce by the bucketful – and at the inflated prices of Borough Market, it’s clear there’s a market for old-fashioned food production, at any cost.
London’s oldest food market has been serving the people of Southwark for 1,000 years, and with that impressive heritage comes an expectation of quality which can only be met by food which is made traditionally and tastes out of this world.
This generation truly cares about what it eats and where it comes from, and that’s why at Quattro Foods we offer a service, and ultimately a product, that tastes as good as if it were made in your granny’s kitchen.