The Mermaid's Sleigh Bed originally appeared on Luxist on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Luxurious Taste of Scotland Travel Package originally appeared on Luxist on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Celebrity Restaurants

Chris Webber's Restaurant Shuts Down originally appeared on Luxist on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Stone Crab Season is Here originally appeared on Luxist on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Nominations have been received and vetted for the best-of-breed in gourmet grocers, online gourmet food, caviar, cheese and bread. The Luxist Readers' Choice Food Awards will be awarded based on your voting.

Each of finalists for the Readers' Choice for the Best Gourmet Grocer/Food Hall is a leader in the industry. One started out with a small store in Texas and today, it has more than 270 stores in North America and the United Kingdom. An Ohio-based nominee is family-owned and operated that is recognized for its great food and service. Two nominees are New York institutions offering gourmet foods from around the world. Last, but not least, there's an opulent Food Hall in London that is known worldwide for the sheer volume and selection of its international goods all presented in breathtaking displays.

The Readers' Choice for the Best Online Gourmet Food nominees include a New York institution with a staff that travel the world in search of great artisan-produced foods. A Seattle-based nominee was launched by a group of passionate food-lovers committed to the best artisan-produced, sustainable foods while another nominee is a family-owned operation that originated from three generations of cheese importers. A Michigan-based nominee is a collection of local businesses, each with its own food specialty. Finally, the Philadelphia-based nominee celebrates the European roots of its two founders with a wide array of gourmet meats, cheeses, oils, and other goods from around the world.

The Readers' Choice for the Best Caviar Retailer for a Luxist Award include award-winning brands from Europe and the United States with each offering the highest of quality. Several offer some of the finest Russian caviar to be found, while one is a proponent of sustainably harvested roe with its own tank-farming system.

Nominees for Readers' Choice for Best Bread Bakery include companies that have been producing bread for decades. One opened more than 70 years ago and is now an institution in Paris, while another was launched in Belgium before expanding around the world. A Los Angeles-based nominee has developed more than 100 varieties of award-winning breads. The Philadelphia-based nominee features artisanal breads and the baked goods of the Ann Arbor-based nominee are known throughout the Midwest.

Readers' Choice nominees for Best Cheese Shop include some of the most respected shops in the world. These cheese shops, offer a full range of both international and domestic artisanal cheeses. They are the destinations for serious cheese lovers and chefs who are in search of the best.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed for each of these categories. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Vote Now For the Readers' Choice Best in Food Awards originally appeared on Luxist on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Neal's Yard Dairy is a nominee for a Luxist Award for Best Cheese Shop.

Neal's Yard Dairy was founded in 1979, offering Greek-style yogurts, crème fraiche and, of course, cheese. Initially a distributor of lackluster wholesale cheeses, the Dairy began to evolve into a world-renowned specialist when owner Randolph Hodgson drove his rickety Citroen to a countryside farm and returned to London with a load of delectable Devonshire Garland cheese.

By sampling more cheeses and talking to customers, Hodgson grew his palate and his business--and outgrew the physical location of Neal's Yard. In 1992 the company moved to 17 Shorts Garden, where it still has a shop. The Dairy also expanded to include maturing rooms under the brick railway arches that support the main line from London Bridge to Dover, as well as a Neal's Yard Creamery located on Dorstone Hill, overlooking the Wye Valley in Herefordshire.

Hodgson still keeps close ties with cheesemakers and customers--he hand-picks cheddars by visiting England's West Country every eight weeks, sampling young cheese to select which batches will be matured for Neal's Yard Dairy. His Citroen has been replaced with a fleet of climate-controlled vans that shuttle cheeses around London, where mature cheese is sold through his two shops.

For those located outside the British Isles, goods from Neal's Yard Dairy are available in restaurants around the world, and by direct order from the company's website. Though the original batch of Devonshire Garland is long gone, there are still plenty of similar West Country cheeses available.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Neal's Yard Dairy: Farm Cheeses from the British Isles originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Nominated for a Luxist Award in the Best Caviar Retailer category is Caviar House & Prunier.

In 1925 Emile Prunier opened the "Prunier" restaurant on Victor Hugo avenue at the corner of rue Traktir, in Paris, France. Already known for La Madeleine in rue Duphot created by her father in 1872, the establishment soon became the prestigious place to eat caviar and a favourite meeting place for seafood lovers.

Fast-forward 135 years later, and Caviar House & Prunier continues this tradition by putting all of its expertise into the service of taste, being the only producer and seller of their own caviar in the world. The company today runs more than 40 boutiques and seafood bars all around the world.

Produced according to Alexander Scott's methods, the excellent properties of the Prunier caviar are behind the increasing popularity of the particular flavour of the Baerii sturgeon and its caviar.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Caviar House & Prunier: Creators of Fine Gastronomy originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Zingerman's Bakehouse: Artisan Bread and Pastry from Ann Arbor originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Max Poilane Bakery: French Bread at its Finest originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Le Pain Quotidien is nominated for a Luxist Award in the Best Bread Bakery category.

When Alain Coumont opened Le Pain Quotidien in his native Belgium in 1990, little did he know then what his artisanal bakery would eventually spawn. Coumont, a highly regarded chef at one of Brussels' most prestigious restaurants, just wasn't able to source bread worthy of his clientele and so started making it himself.

The concept was a huge success from day one. By 1993, there were 16 different locations in Europe. And by 1997, Coumont had opened his first store in New York City. Fast forward to 2009, and you'll find a company, still privately owned, with more than 114 locations around the world. This year, new locations have opened or will open in the Middle East, the United States, Europe and Russia.

Le Pain Quotidien is a French phrase that means "the daily bread." Indeed, Le Pain Quotidien bread is made fresh daily, just as it was in the very beginning. Its whole wheat sourdough breads, called pain au levain, are naturally fermented. Organic stone-ground flour, salt, and water is kneaded and shaped by hand and then baked in a hearth under the watchful eye of artisan bakers.

Le Pain Quotidien restaurants are known for their communal tables, made from reclaimed wood, in which customers sit side-by-side. There, they dine on simple fare from soups and salads to tartines and homemade pastries and breads. The company uses organic ingredients whenever possible.

Each location offers a range of homemade baked goods, from buttery croissants, organic brioche and challah to baguettes, all of which are baked fresh at each location daily. Baked goods are also available for purchase at the counter, including whole and half loaves of wheat, rye, spelt, five-grain and walnut bread.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Le Pain Quotidien: The Daily Bread originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Petrossian is a nominee for a Luxist Award in the Best Caviar Retailer category.

Perhaps the most storied of caviar's purveyors, Petrossian traces its roots to a pair of Armenian brothers who brought their love of roe from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the edge of the Atlantic in the 1920s. Melkoum and Mouchegh Petrossian migrated from Eastern Europe to Paris to continue their studies in law and medicine, but found the City of Light woefully devoid of their favorite Russian delicacy.

Since then, Petrossian has grown to become the premier buyer and importer of Russian caviar worldwide. Its Tsar Imperial label graces some of the finest Beluga, Ossetra and Sevruga on the market. To this day, the company insists that members of the Petrossian family personally select the best of every Russian caviar catch.

Fortunately for those whose appetite for adventure doesn't outweigh the appetite for quality caviar, accompanying modern-day Petrossians on a Russian fishing scow isn't the only way to enjoy their caviar. The company offers delivery, as well as restaurant locations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York.

Founded in 1984, New York's Petrossian restaurant is a special treat. Ideally located for opera goers of discerning taste, it's housed in the historic Alwyn Court Building on Manhattan's West Side, one block from Carnegie Hall and four blocks from Lincoln Center. Melkoum and Mouchegh would most certainly be proud.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Gallery: More from Petrossian

Petrossian: Exquisite Caviar Since the 1920's originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Farmstead is a nominee for a Luxist Award in the Best Cheese Shop category.

The company was founded in 2003 by the husband-and-wife team of Matt and Kate Jennings. They're a well-qualified duo: Matt graduated from culinary school in Vermont in 1995, worked for artisan cheese stores and producers across the country, and studied with master cheesemongers in the U.K, France and Italy. Kate is a classically trained pastry chef.

As co-owners of Providence, R.I.-based Farmstead, Matt and Kate develop close relationships with producers and hand-select fine foodstuffs, specializing in small production, limited release cheeses. As an extension of this hands-on approach, Farmstead aims to educate its customers on the subtleties and history of cheese, offering product tastings, cooking demonstrations, and cheese and beverage pairing classes.

Farmstead's signature cheeses include "Sarabande," co-designed with Dancing Cow Farm of Vermont and boasting hints of hazelnut, sherry, and fresh farm cream at its peak ripeness. Another, called "Drunkin' Providence," is flavorful cheddar washed with Thomas Tew Rum from Rhode Island's Newport Distilling Company.

The Jennings founded Farmstead's sister restaurant, La Laiterie, in 2006 to augment their offerings. Located next to the cheese shop, the bistro serves seasonally influenced meals with fresh ingredients from local sustainable farms; the menu sometimes changes daily. Matt and Kate designed the restaurant themselves, accenting their rustic cuisine with hand-made rust colored paper lights and an interior made from reclaimed barn wood, forged iron and Vermont soapstone.

For those who can't make the trip to Wayland Square, the historical shopping district Providence, to inspect Farmstead's cheeses in person, the company offers a comprehensive website along with speedy delivery options. Rest assured, the cheese will still be just as stinky when it arrives.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Farmstead: Celebrating the Art of Cheese originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Metropolitan Bakery is a Luxist Award nominee in the Best Bread Bakery category.

The bakery opened its doors with the goal of bringing to Philadelphia the amazing breads, its owners, Wendy Smith Born and James Barrett, had tasted in Europe. With a single rack of fresh bread and a shoebox for a cash register, Born and Barrett launched Metropolitan Bakery in 1993. Fifteen years later, what began as an "experiment" between two friends-one a restaurant manager, the other a pastry chef-has grown into a Philadelphia institution.

The partners met while working at Philadelphia's legendary The White Dog Café, which was one of the pioneering institutions of the "buy local" movement. During their time at White Dog, the two friends often lamented how difficult it was to find breads of the quality they'd tasted in Europe. Indeed, the artisan baking process is a slow one. It takes up to two weeks for the natural yeast (made from fermented grapes and figs) to mature, and then another 48 hours for the dough to be mixed, shaped, pounded, left to rise in rye-dusted willow baskets, and then baked in steam-injected, stone-deck ovens. It's this painstaking process that produces the intense, earthy flavors, crackling crusts, and complex textures of artisanal breads.

Barrett's culinary training at the Culinary Institute of America and the Ecole Francaise de Boulangerie d'Aurillac in France, helped him refine the techniques of old-world baking. These experiences and years of trial and error impressed upon him the importance of natural ingredients, traditional methods, and above all, patience, in producing great breads.

In Philadelphia, Metropolitan Bakery has become more than just a great bakery. It is also part of the community. Its owners believe that jobs are the best way out of poverty. As a result, the bakery employs and trains recent parolees, mentors at-risk high school students, and is a co-sponsor of the new H.O.M.E. Page Café in the Free Library, which employs formerly homeless Philadelphians and raises money for Project H.O.M.E. The bakery also donates bread to shelters every week. And because supporting local farmers and purveyors is so important, Metropolitan's five Philadelphia shops offer locally made jams, cheeses, spreads and other specialties. Indeed, most of the products in its stores are made by local farmers, cheesemakers and chefs also trying to preserve artisan traditions. The 19th street store is a pick-up location for community-supported agriculture.

The company has locations in Chestnut Hill, University City, Old City, Rittenhouse Square, and the Reading Terminal Market. It also offers its homemade whole grain granola, coffee chocolate chip granola, pomegranate cinnamon granola, French berry rolls and more for purchase on its website.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Gallery: More from Metropolitan Bakery

Metropolitan Bakery: Artisanal Bread that Helps Others originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Formaggio Kitchen is a nominee for a Luxist Award in the Best Cheese Shop category.

Formaggio Kitchen has been an institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts for over 30 years. It is a gourmand's paradise doubling as a neighborhood grocer. Visitors go to Formaggio Kitchen to stock up on cheeses, cured meats and baked goods, always leaving with something they've never seen before that is sure to become a new house staple. Chefs, both professional and amateur, rely on Formaggio Kitchen for that special ingredient they can't find anywhere else.

Each year, Formaggio Kitchen staff travel to the far reaches of the planet in search of the world's finest artisan products. Their shelves are brimming with products made by individual artisans, each as wonderful as the next: honeys from Sardinia & Piedmont sit aside farmhouse jams from Pays Basque & l'Ardeche, while spicy organic tomato sauce from Liguria neighbors briny Brittany fleur de sel.

Marble slabs support cuts of cheese artistically arranged each morning. Its cheese selection is from cheesemakers around the world, from North America to Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Greece and Italy. At any given time, there are more than three hundred cheeses available to Formaggio Kitchen customers.

But it is Formaggio Kitchen's cheese caves, built out of an old office deep in the nether-reaches of the basement beneath Huron Avenue, that makes it most proud. Constructed in 1996 (as the first of its kind in this country) with all the damp, musty, chilly characteristics of an Alpine hillside, the caves now hold its precious stock at their ideal temperature and humidity, creating both a place to age young wheels and maintain moisture in older ones.

Formaggio Kitchen has locations in Cambridge, Ma., in Boston and New York City. Each store carries a similar selection of imported and domestic delicacies, but each has its own flair. The Formaggio Kitchen website offers an overwhelming selection of cheeses from around the world, in addition to an abundance of oils, vinegars, spreads, chocolate, spices, breads, olives, meats, seafood and antipasti.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Gallery: More from Formaggio Kitchen

Formaggio Kitchen: Cheese is its Passion originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

ChefShop.com is nominated for a Luxist Award in the Best Online Gourmet Food category.

Located in Seattle, ChefShop.com was started ten years ago in 1999 by a group of people that wanted to change the way people thought about and approached their food. The company's mission is to find the best, healthiest foods and goods from artisans and traditional small farmers around the world and bring them to consumers in the U.S. Chefshop.com is fighting against mass market food production and unsustainable farming practices in hopes of fostering the sale of healthier foods with more flavor and value. ChefShop.com is especially proud of the fact that they work directly with their chosen producers and as a result get the freshest, most flavorful goods possible.

Chefshop.com has both a mail-order website and a brick-and-mortar retail store in Seattle. The store also opened in 1999 and offers, in addition to its many shelves of baked and grocery goods, tasting bars for olive oil, jams, honeys, sea salts, and vinegar. The website, on the other hand, is especially shopper-friendly thanks to options of shopping not only by keyword or category but also by recipe and by what's fresh that day.

Goods must meet several stringent criteria before ChefShop.com will consider carrying them and to date their selection exceeds 1000 items from all over the world.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Gallery: More from ChefShop.com

ChefShop.com: Gourmet Gets Back to Basics originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: More from Whole Foods

Whole Foods: The World's Leader in Natural and Organic Foods originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

La Brea Bakery is nominated for a Luxist Award in the Best Bread Bakery category.

Beginning in 1989, La Brea Bakery changed the way people ate bread. The beautiful artisan loaves that had been hand-made and hearth-baked for centuries in Europe had yet to make their way to North America. La Brea Bakery's founder Chef Nancy Silverton was making plans to open the restaurant Campanile with two partners in Los Angeles, CA. She soon discovered that if they wanted to serve the kind of authentic hearth-baked bread that embodied the quality reflected in the restaurant's menu, Chef Silverton would have to bake the bread herself.

It was then that Silverton embarked upon the journey of learning the ancient art of bread baking. Having mastered her craft, she opened a tiny storefront bakery to sell her renowned breads. While the original bakeshop still exists today, La Brea Bakery now operates three state of the art artisan bakeries in the U.S. and delivers over 150 par-baked bread varieties to grocery retail and restaurants across the entire U.S. and throughout Europe and Asia. La Brea Bakery has never compromised our founder's original craftsmanship or dedication to quality. From holiday-time crouton stuffing mix to special occasion breads and bake-at-home frozen breads, La Brea Bakery is continuously rated as the most preferred brand of artisan bread in the U.S.

The company now has locations in Anaheim, Van Nuys and Los Angeles. Its artisan breads are also available for retail purchase across the country.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Gallery: More from La Brea Bakery

La Brea Bakery: Bringing Bread to Life originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iGourmet.com: Specialty Cheeses, Fine Foods, and Exquisite Gifts originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Tsar Nicoulai Caviar is a nominee for a Luxist Award in the Best Caviar Retailer category.

Beluga may be the well-known star of caviar, but the White Sturgeon roe peddled by Tsar Nicoulai Caviar is the choice of the green generation. Founded in 1978 by husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Mats and Dafne Engstrom, Tsar Nicoulai Caviar raises its fish sustainably in Northern California instead of depleting the endangered ranks of wild sturgeon, as many purveyors in other countries do.

With the help of researchers at the University of California Davis, Tsar Nicoulai has developed a proprietary tank-farming system to raise its fish. Water is pumped from local aquifers into a four-acre hydroponics pond topped with a bloom of natural plankton algae and flanked by a year-round crop of vegetables, creating a mineral-rich environment free of mercury, pesticides, and other harmful chemicals often found in international waters.

March of 2004 marked the opening of the Tsar Nicoulai Caviar Café in San Francisco as a complement to the company's delivery business. Customers across the country can have fresh caviar shipped to their doorstep via Tsar Nicoulai's website; celebrity chefs from Wolfgang Puck in Los Angeles to Charlie Palmer in New York are frequent customers. Tsar Nicoulai Caviar's online operation offers caviar, roe, smoked delicacies and an array of caviar accessories.

In light of recent U.N. and U.S. bans on wild caviar from the Caspian and Black Seas, Tsar Nicoulai seems poised to profit from the switch to sustainably harvested roe. Though the West Coast may never produce roe with the glamour and glitz of Beluga, many restaurateurs are turning to Tsar Nicoulai's California State Ossetra as a cheaper, cleaner, greener alternative to its Caspian counterpart.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Tsar Nicoulai Caviar: Sustainable for the Future originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Zingerman's Mail Order has been nominated for a Luxist Award in the Best Online Gourmet Food category. The original Zingerman's Delicatessen was started in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1982 by Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig. It offered a combination of specialty foods, traditional Jewish dishes, and a few sandwiches.

Over the years Zingerman's grew steadily, adding (among others) a bakery, a creamery, a couple of restaurants, and a mail order business to sell it all. Zingerman's Mail Order offers a little bit of everything, all wrapped up in personal touches like excellent customer service and a website that displays everything in charming artistic renditions of reality.

Zingerman's focuses mostly on traditionally made foods, plus a few extras that they deem worthy, but overall the selection is intentionally kept "tight and focused" so people can find what they're looking for more efficiently. They carry goods from all the Zingerman's businesses and this time of year is an especially good time to shop their Thanksgiving selection that includes goodies like Spiced Pecans, Crespone Salami, and their "Turkey Rescue Kit" for making the best of all the seasonal leftovers.

Shop online at Zingermans.com or request a paper catalog by mail here.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Zingerman's Mail Order: Gourmet at Your Fingertips originally appeared on Luxist on Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.