Ta-Ze
Didem Tapban keeps no fewer than six different kinds of olive oil in her house, each good for a different purpose. “I can’t think of a dish without olive oil,” she says. “You tell me one dish you don’t cook with olive oil, so I can tell you that, actually, it’d be very good with olive oil!” In her perfect world, every home would be stocked with at least two bottles–a cold-pressed extra-virgin for bread dipping and salad dressing and a light refined version for frying and baking. Even for your grandma’s cookies, Tapban will assure you, olive oil is just the thing.
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Tapban had been a retail manager for Neiman Marcus and was working for the Italian linen company Frette when she started thinking about opening her own business. “I always dreamt of a place where I could set my own standards,” she says. “I really didn’t want to open another clothing store. It had to be something very extraordinary and unique.” She and Seza were traveling in Nice a couple of summers ago when they chanced upon a few olive oil concept stores. “We fell in love with the idea,” Tapban says. In Turkey shortly afterward they discovered Ta-Ze, and in the following months they contacted Taris and filed a franchise application. But they didn’t hear anything until this past March, when Taris’s marketing director came to Chicago for a vacation and contacted the couple. They saw eye to eye on how to put the concept over, says Tapban. “It’s not just about selling olive oil. It’s about explaining a culture to my clients.”
Tapban and her employees will gladly explain the difference between virgin and extra-virgin olive oil (the latter has a lower acidity and a more distinctive flavor) or the cold-press process by which much of Taris’s oil is produced. A cold-pressed olive is one that’s been cut open and squeezed without the addition of heat, which would result in more oil extracted but less flavor. Each bottle of oil at Ta-Ze comes with a small cardboard tag listing in very small type which city or town the oil came from, what variety of olives was used, when and how they were harvested (most are picked by hand), how the oil was extracted, and its shelf life, density, color, fragrance, taste, maximum acidity, and suggested uses. The store also has a tasting bar where customers can dip bits of bread into various oils, with a salesperson on hand for guidance. Just as it takes time to become a connoisseur of beer or wine, it might take repeated dipping to appreciate the subtle variations between some olive oils.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Joeff Davis.
