Our Story

I met Gabriel during our freshman year of college, and we hit it off fast — we were both obsessed with food, culture, and travel.

Gabriel comes from a traditional Italian family, where cooking is just what you do — it's how the family shows love. He grew up learning to cook Italian and European food, plus some South American dishes too, since part of his family is from Venezuela. My family wasn't big on cooking at all, and we ate out all the time — for us, love was shown through eating together, not necessarily cooking together.

So when Gabriel and I got together, we just kept doing that: I shared Cantonese and Asian food with him, he shared his food with me, and we cooked and ate together constantly (and yes, we both got a little chubbier along the way). For most of our college days, I think we spent more time cooking than studying — we loved hosting dinner parties to share it all with our friends. Through all that time in the kitchen, I picked up not just how to cook, but why ingredient quality actually matters — for food that's both healthier and just genuinely better.

Since then, we've traveled a lot together — Italy (many times), Turkey, Georgia, El Salvador, Hong Kong, South Korea, and a bunch of places across the US. Out of everywhere, Italy is still my favorite: the landscapes, the traditions, and honestly, mostly the food.

Along the way we noticed something. Even in a place like Hong Kong, which has every cuisine you can think of, it's actually hard to find authentic, high-quality Italian products. And on our trips through Italy, we kept meeting small producers who make genuinely great things but don't have a way to get them in front of people outside their region.

So we started Oltremare to connect the two. We bring quality, artisanal Italian products to Hong Kong — for people here who already appreciate good food and are curious enough to try something new. And Italy is just the start: as we keep traveling, we hope to bring more of the gems we find to Hong Kong and the rest of Asia — so we can keep doing what we love, sharing love and joy through food.