Holiday shopping can be an incredibly stressful endeavor. Whether you're wondering what to buy or if the gift will arrive on time, the anxiety can take away from the joy of the season. To make things a little easier, we've compiled a list of luxe gift ideas that are perfect for any food lover.
From the classics like Le Creuset to private cooking courses, these gift ideas cover everything and anything that's needed for the culinary novice to the professionally trained. Instead of searching for the most affordable, it's ideal to invest in gadgets and cookware that will last—consider it an investment.
Related: World-Renowned Chefs Share Their Favorite Go-To Recipes
So do yourself a favor and start shopping now to avoid any lengthy delivery delays or sold-out products. When the holiday season rolls around (it always comes quicker than you realize) you can sit back and enjoy your free time while everyone else is stressing over their to-do lists. Maybe even plan that holiday party you've been putting off every year.
Rare Ingredients and Foodie Favorites From Around the World
Ceremonial Matcha, Felix Roasting Co.
Manhattan’s Felix Roasting Co. imports rare coffees and teas from all over the world. Their Ceremonial Matcha hails from Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, near the awe-inspiring slopes of Mount Fuji.
To buy: $30, felixroastingco.com
Mr. Steak Curated Boxes
Mr. Steak selects pasture-raised USDA Prime steak from local Nebraska ranches and ships them nationwide. From classic cuts like filet mignon and rib-eye to gorgeous (and massive) porterhouse steaks, ordering a curated box from Mr. Steak allows you to send your favorite foodie the most exceptional steaks in America—delivered to their door in biodegradable packaging.
To buy: From $129, mrsteak.com
Domestic Caviar Assortment from Fultonfishmarket.com
For the caviar lover in your life, send a mouth-watering display of fine caviar from New York City’s Fultonfishmarket.com. The domestic assortment comes with four different caviar varieties, crème fraîche, blinis, and a mother-of-pearl tasting spoon.
To buy: $300, Fultonfishmarket.com
Fulton Fish Drop
For the fish and seafood enthusiasts, Fultonfishmarket.com offers the Fulton Fish Drop—essentially, a box (or even a monthly subscription) of high-quality scallops, shrimp, lobsters, or various cuts of hand-selected fish. Sign your favorite foodie up for a Fish Drop subscription, so once the holiday season winds to a close, they still have a delivery to look forward to.
To buy: From $65, Fultonfishmarket.com
Red Bay Coffee Five-Pound Bag
San Francisco’s Red Bay Coffee offers exceptional beans from Asia, South America, and Africa—and their most exciting gift offering is the five-pound whole bean coffee bag. Choose from seven medium or dark roast whole beans, each with an alluring and unique flavor profile.
To buy: $88, redbaycoffee.com
Adjourn Tea House Home Sweet Blend
A lovely local tea shop in Richmond, Virginia, Adjourn combines herbs and botanicals to create innovative tea blends. Their Home Sweet blend is perfect for winter, with black tea, almonds, and cinnamon.
To buy: $22, adjournteahouse.com
Warming Joy Tea Chest, Tea Forte
You might recognize Tea Forte’s beautiful packaging; it’s the brand behind the pyramid-shaped tea bags you often encounter in luxury hotels. For the tea and hotel lover in your life, a stunning box of Tea Forte’s seasonal blends is a perfect treat.
To buy: $60, teaforte.com
Carr Valley Cheese’s “Life of the Party” Gift Box
Is there anything more beautiful than giving the gift of cheese? Carr Valley Cheese curates a beautiful box of their award-winning cheddars and jacks that hard cheese enthusiasts will love.
To buy: $40, carrvalleycheese.com
David Chang's Momofuku Seasoned Salts
For the foodie keen on bringing as many of David Chang’s sensational flavors as possible into their kitchen, the Momofuku seasoned salts gift pack is an easy choice. The savory, spicy, and tingly salts are expertly blended in the Momofuku Culinary Lab.
To buy: $28, momofuku.com
Bona Furtuna Riserva di Nonna Rosa
To share the flavors of Sicily this holiday season, Bona Furtuna offers this reserve olive oil made from the fruits of 1,500-year-old olive trees. Only a limited number of Riserva di Nonna Rosa bottles are made each year—buying one of these olive oils is akin to buying a reserve bottle of Barolo for an Italian wine lover.
To buy: $150, bonafurtuna.com
Fruits Both Familiar and Curious, North South Confections
North South Confections melds fruit flavors with creamy, buttery caramel to create melt-in-your-mouth luxury chocolates. Fruits Both Familiar and Curious is their 12-piece assorted box of chocolate, which seamlessly blends rare fruits with caramel, artfully blanketed by dark chocolate made with 70% cacao.
To buy: $52, northsouthconfections.com
Cooking Tools Foodies Are Eyeing This Holiday Season
The Proclamation Duo, Proclamation Goods
Proclamation Goods specializes in multifunctional, high-end cookware. With their three-piece set, at-home cooks get the Hybrid Pot, the Sidekick Skillet, and a matching lid for both pans. The two pans can also come together to create a Dutch oven—how's that for unprecedented functionality?
To buy: $379, Proclamationgoods.com
Wüsthof Crafter 8" Chef’s Knife
Known for crafting impeccable knives, Wüsthof makes this perfectly balanced knife with high-carbon steel and an oak wood handle. The precision edge technology of the knife “ensures a 20% sharper blade with twice the edge retention.”
To buy: $200 (originally $262), williams-sonoma.com
Terra Kaffe TK-01 Espresso Machine
Terra Kaffe TK-01 Espresso MachineBrooklyn and Berlin’s best coffee connoisseurs came together to craft this espresso machine, which offers a precise barista experience, from grinding your whole espresso beans to customizing the brewing temperature and milk-frothing pressure.
To buy: $775, store.moma.org
48” Sub-Zero Beverage Center and Wine Storage
This four-foot wine and beverage fridge is actually a two-piece set; on one side, you’ll have a state-of-the-art beverage center for chilled non-alcoholic beverages and ready-to-serve white wines, and on the other side, a 24-inch wine fridge that holds 46 bottles.
To buy: $5,990, subzero-wolf.com
Breville Smart Grinder Pro
Coffee enthusiasts know the importance of a high-quality burr grinder that exalts the beans rather than burning them. The Breville Smart Grinder Pro has 60 settings to ensure a precise grind every time.
To buy: $200 (originally $300), surlatable.com
48” Wolf Gas Range
The ultimate gift for a kitchen overhaul is, without a doubt, this 48-inch stove and oven with four stove-top burners, two griddles, and two ovens. With an impressive display of the latest kitchen technology, the double griddles use infrared heat, as does the oven’s interior broiler.
To buy: $12,390, subzero-wolf.com
All-Clad Stainless-Steel 3-Piece Mixing Bowl Set
For the foodie who’s getting into baking, you can’t go wrong with a three-piece mixing bowl set. And like every All-Clad product on the market, these gleaming mixing bowls are built to last.
To buy: $100, williams-sonoma.com
Blendtec Professional 800 Blender
An excellent blender is an underrated kitchen necessity. You can’t go wrong with the Blendtec 800, which blends powerfully and quietly, so you can make a juice bar-level smoothie without waking the whole house up in the morning.
To buy: $800, williams-sonoma.com
Ooni Karu Wood and Charcoal Fired Portable Pizza Oven
For wood-fired creations, from pizza to delightfully caramelized vegetables, the Ooni Karu wood oven is an exceptional piece of equipment. The portable oven weighs less than 27 pounds and can cook with hardwood, lump charcoal, or gas.
To buy: $329, williams-sonoma.com
Espro Bloom Pour Over Coffee Brewer
Pour over coffee is no longer just a beverage you’ll find at high-end coffee shops. At-home pour over is more popular than ever, and the Espro Bloom brewer uses microfilter technology to make an excellent cup of coffee.
To buy: $35, williams-sonoma.com
Technivorm Moccamaster Coffee Maker
The contraption to end all coffee-making contraptions, the Technivorm Moccamaster has a two-stage heating system, an auto-drip basket, and an expedited filtration system. Made in the Netherlands and approved by the Specialty Coffee Association of America, it makes the perfect cup of coffee, from start to finish, in six minutes flat.
To buy: $309-$349 (originally $359-$379), surlatable.com
Le Creuset Signature 5-Piece Set
Is there anything more timeless than a gift from Le Creuset? This coveted Le Creuset cast iron set includes a dutch oven, a sauce pan, and a skillet; the holy trinity of cookware for any at-home chef.
To buy: $400 (originally $685), surlatable.com
Goodscious Blue Ceramic Mason Jars Measuring Cups
Mason jars certainly have a cult following thanks to their unique, rustic-chic aesthetic. So, for the Mason jar lover who is constantly baking (or, at least, is an aspirational baker), these ceramic Mason jar measuring cups are fun and whimsical.
To buy: $22, amazon.com
Gift Republic Take Out Dice
A hilarious gift for the indecisive foodie, put this takeout dice in their stocking so they’ll never get caught up on the Thai food versus pizza debacle again.
To buy: $5, amazon.com
Butter Churner
If you’ve ever had hand-churned butter at a country inn, you know store-bought butter doesn’t hold a candle to the freshly churned stuff. This butter churn has an easy-to-wash glass jar and gives foodies the opportunity to make their own butter creations (think: apple butter, cinnamon butter, and even buttermilk bases for baking).
To buy: $39, uncommongoods..com
Breville Smart Oven Air
Air fryers are the hot-ticket kitchen item this year, because nothing gets you through a long period of time spent at home quite like the ability to make your own restaurant-quality fried foods. The Breville Smart Oven Air is the cream of the air frying crop—it functions as both an air fryer and a convection oven.
To buy: $400, surlatable.com
Vertuo Next Deluxe, Nespresso
For an unprecedented espresso experience, the Vertuo Next Deluxe is the newest Nespresso on the market—not to mention the sleekest and smallest Nespresso to date. It makes a great cup of pour over coffee, in addition to a variety of espresso drinks, and is the first Nespresso machine made of 54% recycled plastic.
To buy: $189, nespresso.com
Vitamix Immersion Blender
An immersion blender has only become a kitchen essential in the last five years. But once you commit to an immersion blender, you won’t go back—it’s game-changing for the foodie who loves to make French-inspired potages, or creamy vegetable soups, all winter long.
To buy: $150, surlatable.com
Rishi Simple Brew Loose Leaf Tea Pot
The ritual of steeping loose leaf tea is quite meditative. Buy some loose lavender, mint leaves, and chamomile pearls, and start blending your own tea creations. With the Rishi loose leaf tea pot, you can steep your tea much in the way you’d make coffee in a french press.
To buy: $20, amazon.com
Anza Concrete Espresso Maker
The Anza espresso machine is at once a mechanism to make coffee and art for your kitchen. Made with porcelain, brass, and hand-cast concrete, it is an espresso-making and milk-frothing powerhouse.
To buy: $1,180, anzacoffee.com
Thermomix
The Thermomix TM6, much like the Instant Pot, stuns at-home chefs with its fast-acting technology and multi-use systems. Use it as a slow cooker, a sous vide, a blender, and an easy way to reheat food—and rest assured, that’s just the tip of the iceberg with this versatile machine.
To buy: $1,500, shop.thermomix.com
KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker
The ice cream KitchenAid attachment is revelatory for the foodies who want to make their own ice cream with daring flavor combinations.
To buy: $80, kitchenaid.com
Experiential Gifts for the Foodie in Your Life
Fresh Pasta Making with Delicious Experiences
Delicious Experiences is committed to bringing the best food and beverage experiences from around the world into your home. For the Italy-obsessed foodie in your life, surprise them with a pasta making class, where they’ll learn the craft from Florence-based pasta experts.
To buy: $410, deliciousexperiences.com
Sur la Table Virtual Cooking Classes
Sur la Table is connecting foodies with their expert chefs for private, interactive cooking classes. These classes spotlight specific dishes (think: shakshuka or homemade gnocchi) or culinary techniques from around the world.
To buy: From $29, surlatable.com
Murray’s Cheese Virtual Private Classes
If you’re missing New York City’s iconic Murray’s Cheese and are hoping to throw a holiday party this year, consider doing it virtually with Murray’s private classes. Murray’s private classes also make a perfect experiential gift for the fromage connoisseur on your list.
To buy: From $120 per person, murrayscheese.com
Personalized Cookbook Set, Juniper Books
Juniper Books’ personalized cookbook set is perfect for the design-oriented food lover. This set of five classic cookbooks—including “How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman and “James Beard’s American Cookery”—has personalized book jackets to enhance the aesthetics of any kitchen.
To buy: $350, juniperbooks.com
