Oil & Vinegar

Oil and Vinegar is a wonderful little specialty gourmet shop that features oils, vinegars (obviously), spices, dips and the like. I am absolutley blown away buy their wall of rows of glass vessels with all their oils. What a wonderful display… and good use of space. You are able to taste all of thier oils and when you purchase, you get these little glass pouring bottles that you can refill when you finish your intial purchase.
I’m a huge fan of the pumpkin seed oil. Awesome drizzled over a root vegetable bisque or just dipped with some crusty bread. Their oils are rich and flavorful and I believe are all virgin. I store mine in the fridge to prevent rancidity. Their oils are so pure, its a good idea to store them chilled. They also have two grinders that I love: a rock sugar, cocoa nib and chili grinder and a rock sugar and basil grinder.
This shop is not for everyone, but if can appreciate the flavors and utilize them in your cooking, Oil and Vinegar is a little gem.

Walked in there by accident about a month ago, because I thought it was a chocolate store. Then I tried the blood orange olive oil — I had never tried anything like it before, and it tasted amazing. The woman working there was this skinny dark haired woman — really friendly and informative. I had to buy the oil.
It was great on fish, but I found that the flavor overpowered almost everything else I put it in. It was time to try a new flavor. When I went back, there was this blond woman working, who was very unfriendly and hovered *right* next to me, in complete silence, as I tried to sample a few oils — she acted like she thought I was going to steal something. I probably would have bought something the second time (because I *loved* the store the first time), but I actually felt uncomfortable tasting more than one oil. It seems pretty stupid that it seemed like she didn’t want me to sample the oils, since that seems to be the point of the whole store.
I love small specialty stores. I realize they’re often more expensive, but I’m willing to pay that premium for a few reasons, other than the quality of the products: I expect more knowledgeable, more helpful, friendlier employees who help to create that sense of rapport when you walk into a store. Most specialty stores know that’s important, and that’s how they keep their edge when competing with big stores and online stores. If I don’t get that, there’s no reason to pay that extra money.
If I walk by and see that first woman again, I’d probably go in and buy the Australian or Spanish olive oil. Obviously I know that salespeople don’t get commission and that it doesn’t make a difference, but to me the buying experience is often as important as the product. I’m not going to spend money on a specialty product if it’s not enjoyable to buy it.
Products are pretty wonderful though. There are a few products which cater to people who probably don’t cook much (garlic olive oil? Come on. You can combine those flavors easily at home in a dish) and also products for people who take cooking seriously. Pretty great concept.

Amazing food products.
I stopped/​stumbled in after pops, and picked up some home warming gifts for a friend. They have fantastic gourmet dips, seasonings, and some unique dishes. Denise, the manager was incredibly friendly.
I highly recommend the garlic sauces. They had samples throughout the store, it was a tasting fest. I had a difficult time limiting my choices, but I settled on the garlic dressing. They featured it with bread sticks… it was amazingly flavored, tingly, savory, but sweet, mm mm, cannot describe, except, absolutely scrumptious. I wandered around the store, tasting everything and groaning, absolutely tempting flavors. As a side note, I am struggling to preserve my purchases as gifts for a friend and not as treats to myself.
I was able to leave my packages, as we were continuing our drinking binge. They did not have bags large enough to secure the bowls that I purchased, so their offer was very handy, as everything would have been broken by the end of the evening.
When I stopped in a week later to pick up my package, it was in a fantastic reusable shopping bag! Way to go!

What a fun, new and exciting place! Sunday was a gorgeous day in Chicago! So my boys and I decided to go somewhere outdoors to enjoy the weather and hang out! So we agreed to go to old orchard and do a bit of shopping, munching and walking!!! As we were walking we noticed a group of peeps trying to get into this little shop named Oil and Vinegar, which apparently has been there for about a year and in a half and we had no clue! Anyhow it was sampling heaven. They had cubed bread with toothpicks to sample the pesto sauce, a tomato sauce and 3 different types of dipping oils with varies herbs. The further you walked in the more sampling their was. They had about 20 different olive oil’s and vinegars to sample. The boys found this awesome spread made of figs and cocoa and it was great. I actually made them pancakes this morning and spread some it on top and they loved it!
This was a great experience and I’ll def. be coming back!