• Seasonal

A Holiday Gift Guide for Food Lovers

By Eric Twardzik · 11/28/2017

Need the perfect gift for the gourmand in your life? We’ve got you covered.

  1. The Food Lens x Colors Collective Dad Hats
    Perfect for the friend who’s forever chasing style trends and brunch reservations, our of-the-moment dad hats were made in collaboration with Brooklyn-based designer Colors Collective. Each irreverent cap features stitched embroidery that depicts hall-of-fame-favorite foods, from doughnuts to pizza, burgers to lobster. (In case you’re buying for the frequent imbiber, there’s a dirty martini hat, too.) Buy one here.
  2. Cookbooks with Local Flavor
    There’s never been a better time to be a cookbook lover, and some of Boston’s best and brightest have recently released their own tomes. A home cook looking for New England heartiness will appreciate Homegrown by Matt Jennings, or Oysters: A Celebration in the Raw by Row 34’s Jeremy Sewall. True carnivores can bite into The New Charcuterie by Jamie Bissonnette. For the vagabond foodie in your life, pick up Myers + Chang at Home, Ana Sortun’s Soframiz & Spice, or Stir: Mixing it Up in the Italian Tradition by Barbara Lynch. But don’t leave out the baking nut: Joanne Chang’s Flour and Flour, Too provide hundreds of pages of carby greatness.
  3. Moody’s Delicatessen & Provisions Gift Boxes
    Buying for someone who’s always reaching for that final piece of coppa? Indulge their devotion to charcuterie by picking something up at the holiday pop-up market from Moody’s Delicatessen at 227 Newbury Street. Inside, you’ll find all the cured meats, wild boar jerky, and Bourbon & Bacon Salami that’s made the Waltham deli a carnivore destination—plus pickles, jams, and more mustards than you thought could possibly exist. And if you don’t have time to narrow down the dizzying selection, one of several gift baskets is sure to please the gourmand on your list.
  4. Books on Wine and Cocktails
    If the oenophiles and cocktail lovers in your life enjoy cracking open a good book as much as a Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Macallan 21, you’re in luck. Wine lovers will get a chance to burnish their knowledge (and tableside tasting rep) with Drink Progressively from The Urban Grape. Your friend that knows every bartender in town will be well served by Boston Cocktails: Drink and Tell, and its follow-up, Drunk & Told, which together chronicle over 1,000 cocktail recipes from local watering holes. Just don’t leave any teetotalers behind; sate their thirst with Culinary Tea, a compendium of global tea recipes penned by L’Espalier tea sommelier Cynthia Gold.
  5. Gift Cards for Cooking and Cocktail Classes
    Send someone back to school with a class to hone their culinary or cocktail skills. Courses at the Boston Center for Adult Education have covered everything from molecular gastronomy to classic Thai. Milk Street, a new cooking school from America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated founder Christopher Kimball, provides intensive lessons and occasional appearances by local chefs. For the cocktail-minded, Bully Boy Distillers leads a class at the Boston Public Market that shows attendees how to make three classic cocktails while snacking on local breads and cheeses, while the Boston Shaker leads intimate eight- to 12-person classes on cocktail techniques in their Somerville shop.
  6. A Gift Card to Outstanding in the Field
    Send a farm-to-table fanatic to Outstanding in the Field, a touring series that stages multi-course meals prepared by guest chefs at farms celebrating their fresh harvests. Each begins with a farm tour, followed by a family-style dinner with wine and beer pairings. The roving event series’ past dinners have included Craigie on Main chef Tony Maws cooking at Allandale Farm, plus Alden & Harlow’s Michael Scelfo at Island Creek Oyster Farm in Duxbury. Rain or shine, every dinner is served al fresco in the fields of the farm that hosts it: the very definition of Instagram-worthy.

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