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The Best Food and Drink Gifts in Toronto

Christine Peddie

6 months ago

The Best Food and Drink Gifts in Toronto

Few things separate the supremely organized from the rest of us quite like the holidays. Still, even if you find yourself among the frenzied masses frantically scratching things off your interminable to-do list, help is here. The best food gifts in Toronto cover a trifecta of holiday goals — they'll ensure you breeze through that list, spread oodles of cheer and make you look like the bona fide hero of the season. Big or small, the gifts on our list cover every sweet and savoury base, with a few scrumptious sippers added in for sheer fun.

No matter what type of gift you need, you'll find it here. From thoughtful cocktail-hour contributions, and lavish gifts for those in your inner circle, to edible bits and bobs that dazzle, the best food gifts in Toronto celebrate our local culinary scene as they help you spread goodwill effortlessly. Make your list, check it twice, then scan the options for the best gift for each of your nicest peeps. Treat yourself, while you're at it, and congratulate yourself on just how detailed you've become.

Pusateri's Fine Foods

A perennial arbiter of good taste, it's no wonder Ida Pusateri recommends a gift of caviar this holiday season. Innately celebratory and undeniably deluxe, leave it to sturgeon roe to show you care. With crème fraîche, sliced brioche, mini blini and the essential garnishes needed to make a tin of caviar shine, The Caviar Box from Pusateri's is the type of extravagance that comes but once a year.

G Sweets

A season spent gazing at — and indulging in — cookie platters brimming with treats from G Sweets' Holiday Cookie Box is sure to be bright. Whether you need to hide your own baking inadequacies or just thrill at treating others, each 38-piece box is a fail-safe buy. With Cardamom Oat Snaps, Spritz cookies, Cacao and Maple Diamant cookies, and Kourabiedes, each order includes a variety of seasonal flavours and textures in earth-friendly compostable wrapping.

Zaz Jars

A veritable party in a box, Zaz Jars' Holiday Bundle is the gift that fits, whether your recipient is perpetually expecting guests or tends to pick them up on their way home. Each delivery includes three types of pickle, two jars of hummus and baba ganoush. Add a couple of dippers, a bottle of champers, and the party might never stop.

truLOCAL

Few things are better than the gift of stress-free holiday entertaining. With seasoned turkey, organic sides, gravy and apple pie, truLOCAL's Roast Turkey Dinner delivers meal nirvana to kitchen veterans and newbies alike. A gift that eliminates guesswork, arrives at the front door, and requires little prep time, this is one that will be talked about for generations to come.

130 Cawthra Ave #105

Sweet Flour Bake Shop

Eight days is a long time to keep tiny hands from sitting idle. With nine undecorated sugar cookies, three tubes of buttercream, and decorative sprinkles, Sweet Flour Bakeshop's DIY Hanukkah Cookie Decorating Kit will ensure at least a few active hours.

60 Kensington Ave Units 6-14

Sunnys Chinese

Friends miss out on the first merch drop from Sunny's Chinese? Make their day with a tote or tee from one of the city's hottest spots, all while proving you do listen when they whine. Just act fast when items are restocked. Or, you'll have to explore the other items on this list.

Sunday Farms

True, "'Tis the season for ethically-raised, grass-fed, antibiotic-free meat" hasn't entered the lexicon quite like "happy holidays" but that doesn't make it incorrect. A time when we treat our nearest and dearest to the finer things, there's no better moment than the holidays to introduce your loved ones to Sunday Farms' catalogue of nourishing, natural proteins. Choose a curated box, mix and match seafood with various cuts of beef, chicken, pork and lamb to make your own, or gift a subscription and wait patiently to be invited to dinner.

653 Dupont St

Stubbe Chocolates

A gorgeous centrepiece (that does double duty as a stress toy), Stubbe Chocolates' Hanukkah Smash Cake is filled with oodles of satisfying sweets. Available in milk, dark or white chocolate, each smash cake is decorated in yellow and blue for the eight-day festival. Housed within? A dazzling variety of berry clusters, orange peel, almond clusters, florentines, and other beloved Stubbe creations.

443 King St W

SOMA Chocolatemaker

If there's ever been a gift guaranteed to bewitch the chocolate lovers in your life, it's Soma's Box of Plenty. Heavy with the weight of assorted familiar favourites and limited-edition treats, each box offers an assortment of flavours designed to delight. Available in four sizes, you can tailor your order to your loved ones' degree of chocolate addiction.

627 Richmond St W

Scout

For a breather from heavier bites, Scout's sustainable, locally-caught tinned seafood is just the thing to pair with happy hour drinks. Available on the company's website, each Scout Market Goods Holiday Bundle includes an acacia wood board, cheese knives, and three ceramic bowls that are an ideal size to hold the lobster, PEI mussels and rainbow trout also found inside. Introduce family and friends to seacuterie, and they'll be forever grateful.

4352 Mountainview Rd

Rosewood Winery & Meadery

Wine — and honey — lovers take note. Niagara's Rosewood Winery & Meadery is a one-stop shop for locally-made sips and sweets. With five festive gift packages on offer, there's one for everyone on your list, from your favourite host to your long-suffering better half. Select a box brimming with four types of honey or the Rosewood Lover, loaded with six bottles of fine Rosewood wine and wildflower honey. Each is guaranteed to elicit smiles, and profound feelings of goodwill.

Provisions Food Company

This season, support local with a purchase from Provisions Food Company. Based in Niagara, the specialty food brand makes myriad scrumptious items, from sweet and savoury jams and shortbread, to honey and popcorn. Bundle a few favourites and know your loved ones will be well taken care of, from breakfast through to movie night.

1099 Yonge St

Nadege

Everyone else gifting boxed chocolates? Make a statement with an edible chocolate sculpture from Nadège that's as fanciful as the idea of a guy and his herd of reindeer traversing the globe in one night. Made of dark chocolate, the 500-gram Snow Globe sculpture is magical, over-the-top, and sure to stun.

488 Wellington St W

Marben

There's nothing quite like a customized gift to show how much you care. This year, create a local love gift basket at Marben Market and delight your inner circle with rewards ranging from soups and condiments, to cocktail kits, wine and more. A present that supports local farmers and artisans, and delights the people you cherish with a wealth of fabulous food finds, this is one you won't want to overlook.

Love of Cocktails

Gifting with Love of Cocktails is as easy as knowing your loved ones' spirit of choice. With a flurry of cocktail kit options, each designed to showcase a certain type of alcohol, shopping at LOC is simplicity at its finest. Plus, with Canada-wide delivery on offer, this one-stop-shop will have you feeling as jolly as the big man in red.

Greenhouse Juice Co.

This year, gift loved ones a better way to nog nirvana. Plant-based and gluten-free, made from organic ingredients, Greenhouse Juices' Holiday Nog is the smooth, subtly-spiced, lower-sugar beverage they'll keep on-hand all season long.

Glory Hole Doughnuts

A go-to for doughnuts year-round, Glory Hole is essential come Hanukkah. Available in limited quantities between December 18th and 24th, the team's strawberry jelly-filled sufganiyot are fluffy, sugar-coated and exactly what you want to dive in to as you celebrate the festival of lights.

Manulife Centre

Eataly Toronto

Chock-full of goodies, Eataly's Italian Holidays gift box is like a dozen presents in one. An actual vacation may not be in the plans this year, but surprise your loved ones with one of Eataly's treasure chests of fun and they can at least eat as though they're sojourning somewhere sunny.

4833 Tufford Rd

Dillon's Small Batch Distillers

Though nothing compares to your warm embrace, sometimes you just can't make it home for the holidays. Cheer your forlorn loved ones with the gift of hot beverages to help ward off winter's chill. Dillons' Mulled Rye Cider Cocktail Kit includes everything required to make a simple, seasonal stunner. Plus, if plans change and you end up visiting, each kit includes enough to share.

48 Ossington Ave

Dear Grain

Tis the season to attempt to buy unique gifts for people who literally have it all. Happily, it's also the season for dietary excess, meaning that gourmet gifts couldn't be more welcome. This year, thrill recipients with one of Dear Grain Bakery's new Holiday Gift Baskets. Whether you choose the Pasta Night option, or splurge on the larger Sparkling Charcuterie assortment, you'll have triumphed over the season's greatest challenge, with ease.

3380 Midland Ave #11

Daan Go Cake Lab

Like a gift pack dreamt up in the Land of Sweets, each Holiday Gift Basket from Daan Go Cake Lab is a journey through a magical land of sugary bliss. With flavoured chocolate bombs, almond sponge toffee clusters, palmier, shortbread, mochi brownie mix and a keepsake Daan Go coaster, this is the surprise to send when making a good impression is key.

483 Church St

Craig's Cookies - Church

Show Santa just how good you really are, by setting out a box of holiday joy from Craig's Cookies this Christmas Eve. With Candy Cane Shortbread, Cranberry Bliss, Terry's Chocolate Orange, and other festive flavours, the 2022 Holiday Mix has a cookie to suit everyone's tastes. Available at all Craig's Cookies locations, and for national shipping, each box is guaranteed to spread cheer to Santa — and his helpers — all season long.

Clearsips

At Clearsips, alcohol abstinence is celebrated through a host of zero- and low-proof offerings. Best of all? Sobriety doesn't mean a life without bubbles. With Oddbird Spumante and Oddbird Spumante Rosé, two stemless glasses and a sparkling wine stopper, the team's Celebration Gift Set is a dry experience with all the fizz and fun that the holiday season demands.

Chefdrop

It's hard to make the gift of cheese better than it naturally is, yet, in partnership with Savour Ontario, Chefdrop has managed the impossible. The company's new, limited-edition cheese board features an abundance of fine Ontario specimens, including Upper Canada Cheese Heritage Cheddar, Glengarry Celtic Blue, and Mountain Oak Farmstead Gouda, along with locally-made pear jam. Even better? With each purchase, Savour Ontario will donate 200 meals to Second Harvest, and, in keeping with its ongoing commitment to connect people and food, Chefdrop will donate a meal to someone in need. A gift that truly spreads holiday cheer, this is one you'll want to snag before it sells out.

45 Ripley Ave

Cheese Boutique

Stun the hard-core food fiends in your life with the cheese-fuelled experience of a lifetime. Available for groups of two to six people, each Cheese Boutique tour includes a guided excursion through the store and striking vault, a bottle of Stratus 2019 Pristine Cuvée Cabernet Franc, and plenty of snacks — from charcuterie and antipasto to pastry and, naturally, some of the world's finest, rarest cheeses. Choose to tour with Ardiana Pristine, or her famous uncle, and prepare for a trip unlike any other.

Canadian Women in Food

Give a gift that gives back, with a snack pack brimming with goodies made by members of Canadian Women in Food. Each box — from a movie-themed collection to one for spicy types — supports women in the food industry, and select charitable partners. Filled with maple-coated pecans, shortbread cookies, popcorn, sparkling soda, and much more, the Gourmet Holiday Selections Box will see your recipient through snowstorms, TV marathons, game night and myriad other holiday moments.

1121 Queen St E

Bobbette & Belle

If a blanket of sugar and a spray of sprinkles aren't coating the kitchen floor throughout December, is it even the holidays? Keep little hands busy with a DIY Gingerbread House kit from Bobbette & Belle. True, the kids' creations may not look quite like the ones at the bakery but, with delicious house pieces, royal icing, premium sugar decorations, and fondant for trees, they're sure to taste just as sweet.

124 Ossington Ave

Bellwoods Brewery

If your gift list is densely populated by beer buffs, Bellwoods' Holiday Boxes will keep you sane, with the perfect gift for everyone. With four options on offer, the brewery has something for true aficionados, thrill seekers and those who fall somewhere in between. With an assortment of favourite cans and bottles, a Bellwoods Brewery logo pub glass and bottle opener, the Go To Gift Box is the happy medium we've got our eyes on.

Bar From Afar

Whatever your recipient's drink of choice, Bar From Afar has a cocktail kit to please. Spotlighting gin, vodka, whiskey, tequila, or a custom combo of four or six sippers, each kit delivers enough spirit to ensure your friends and family are holiday ready the whole month long.

A Cookie Called Quest

When your plant-based peeps need some holiday joy, A Cookie Called Quest delivers bold, festive flavour without a single iota of animal product. Inspired by the team's most popular creations, the Rock Da Bells Holiday Pack includes six flavours ranging from Candy Cane Explosion to Double Chocolate Amaretto.