When it comes to grilling a steak, many home cooks often think that they can quickly run to the grocery store, pick any cut or steak they see, and just slap it on a hot grill and - voila! - a good dinner. However, many of us who have tried this have inevitably run afoul of the Great Beef Gods, with cinder-dry steaks or tough hunks of gray meat. Here is a very simple list of great cuts of beef for grilling, and the best ways to prepare them.

Steaks for One or Two

Filet Mignon: Butter soft, boneless and best served rare to medium-rare, this tenderloin steak is considered a delicacy. From the short loin, these exceptionally tender steaks are ideal for the high-heat sear of the grill because they are best served between rare and medium in doneness for best flavor. While filet mignon is famous for its tenderness, it lacks the deep meaty flavor and richness of the rib eye and strip steak. Consider topping the steak with a dab of butter after grilling.

New York Strip: Another meaty, big-flavored grilling classic, the New York Strip is cut from the tender short loin of the cow. Less marbled than a rib eye, but with a thick band of fat around the edge, the strip steak sears beautifully using direct heat over hot coals.

Porterhouse: The Porterhouse, like its little brother, the T-Bone, is a highly prized, and highly priced, cut. One half of this steak is the New York Strip, while the small meaty bit on the other side is a filet, cut from the tenderloin. These steaks come from the extra-tender "short loin" of the cow, which is located on the steer's middle-back. The meat is highly marbled and usually quite tender. They are excellent for grilling or quickly seared over hot coals and finished slowly over indirect heat. Marinating and seasoning can vary, but just sprinkling salt and pepper on it prior to putting it on the grill can also suffice.

Rib Eye: Arguably the champion of the grill, the rib eye steak is tender, flavorful and marbled with fat. The rib eye - named as such because it is the center cut of the rib section of the cow - are extremely flavorful but benefit from a good marinade. These can come bone-in or bone-out, or with a giant bone sticking out also called a "Tomahawk." Choose the bone-in rib eye to ensure a juicy, complex flavor. Most steak lovers prefer their meat served rare to medium-rare; this cut can even stand up to extra cooking time and still be richly flavored.

For those of you who want to send a delicious delicacy to the one you love on Valentine's Day there are some great mail order options. Whether you like cookies or chocolates there is something for everyone.

We write about Dean & Deluca a lot here on Luxist in part because they consistently offer quality products for the discerning gourmand from various manufacturers around the world. Their offerings for Valentine's Day are no exception:

• From Valerie Confections an artisinal confectioner in Los Angeles, come chocolates designated as Pour Elle and Pour Homme. Each box contains 3 large chocolate hearts and 8 small hearts with the "For Her" gift box having traces of edible rose petals and the "For Him" gift box is completed with caramel and toffee filled chocolates. Each set of 11 pieces retails for $30.00 a box.
• Chocolat Moderne in New York city is represented with a red box filled with 12 hand painted chocolate hearts. The $36.00 box contains two each of six different flavors.
• For those who like their sweets from France, the Pyramide des Tropiques from Francois Pralus, is a great choice for serious chocolate lovers who are more interested in the chocolate itself than cute Valentine wrapping. A stack of 10 individual bars each made with beans from a different part of the world and a 75% cocoa content for $12.00.
  
• Eleni's specializes in selling hand iced cookies. There is an adorable box of pink and purple XO shaped cookies 18 for $50.00 If you go to Eleni's web-site there are just under 20 different designs from which you can pick the perfect option for your sweetie.

All of these purveyors have their own web-sites and it is up to you to decide whether you'd like to comparison shop quickly through Dean & Deluca or take your time and order individually from the different stores. Either way you will come away "smelling like roses" but "tasting like chocolate" a perfect combination for Valentine's Day.

Right after the winter holidays ended, the Valentine's Day promotions went up and I thought, good grief, already? But yes, already. You have just a few days left to get a special gift for that special someone. Here's an idea: gourmet brownies from Brownie Points. I received a gift from here a few years ago and remember just how luscious these chocolately creations were.

There are brownie gift boxes ($17.99 - $71.99) as well as individual brownies (only $3 each, but really, who can stop at just one?), in flavors such as cappuccino toffee fudge, chocolate caramel sea salt, butterscotch sensations, peanut butter passion, raspberry caramel fudge, and even classic double chocolate chunk. Up now on the site is the special Valentine's Day collection ($17.99 - $125.99), if you'd rather let Brownie Points help you choose a gift. Some items in this collection also feature popcorn and other candy confections.

I may place an order for myself tonight, and hit the gym, pre-emptively, tomorrow.

A few months ago New York's famed Time Warner Center opened a new culinary club, Circle of Taste, free to join.

COT has just announced its first ticketed event -- "The Best of Beef & The Beauty of Barolo" -- a dinner to be hosted within Porter House New York's wine cellar by Chef Michael Lomanaco (shown) and Master Sommelier Roger Dagorn. All the wines will be a selection of highly-sought-after and difficult-to-acquire Barolo wines produced in limited quantities.

Erpacrife Nebbiolo Metrodo Tradicionale

Bollito Misto
Tender poached filet mignon, cotechino sausage and salsa verde
La Querciola Barolo Donna Bianca 2004 'cru Costa di Rose'

Brasato al Barolo
Homemade Pappardelle Pasta, Braised Beef Short Ribs
Scarzello Barolo 2004 'cru Sarmassa'

Arrosto di Costata
Roasted Dry Aged Prime Rib of Beef
Cascina Ebreo, Torbido VDT 2001 'Novello di Monforte'

Dessert - Torta al cioccolato alle pere
Pears with mascarpone and chocolate
Ca'de' Mandorli, Brachetto d'Acqui 2008

Dinner begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $175 per person, and the multi-course tasting menu is all-inclusive. COT members may reserve two seats. Perhaps get an early start to the Valentine's Day weekend!

Whether you're a tea drinker yourself or just like to have it on hand to offer friends and family, this Loose Leaf and Blooming Teas gift box from VivaTerra is a beautiful and elegant way to store and serve hot tea. The box is made of sustainable wood and comes filled with six varieties (two of each makes twelve) of tea, with some herbal tea blends and some handwoven blooming teas that open into pretty flowers when placed in hot water to steep. All the teas are all stored in individual cleartop tins and refills are available. $69

On Monday, Feb. 8, 500 lucky New Yorkers will get a chance to taste gourmet fast food of sorts from some of the city's most popular chefs. It'll be the street cart equivalent of New York City Ballet dancers doing pirouettes on a subway platform, or Broadway actors singing karaoke in a dive bar. In other words, a rare treat.

Four top chefs - Daniel Boulud, Alain Ducasse, Paul Liebrandt and Michael White - will be operating street carts and in four top secret locations around Manhattan. The lunches will be free, but you know what they say about free lunches.

Caviar, lovely as it is, lacks a certain ease of use. If you've ever longed for a cleaner caviar here it is, the caviar cube. The NY Times reports that for the last 20 years the United States Fish and WIldlife Service has not permitted the import of pressed caviar because it is too hard to tell what sort of sturgeon it came from. But now Petrossian is making cubes of pressed caviar from farmed California transmontanus. The black cubes are packed in oil and can has a variety of purposes including adding a luxe twist to pasta. The oil, which takes on a fishy flavor, can also be used for cooking or seasoning. The Caviarcubes sell for $45 for around 18 cubes.

Steak for stakes? New york steakhouse Smith & Wollensky has created a unique promotion to capitalize on a bankers' bonus season that is seeing less cash and more shares handed out. The steakhouse chain took out a full-page ad today in the New York Times business section offering to trade steak dinners for diner's stock certificates. Reuters reports that while around 50 bankers have inquired no one has redeemed their stock certificates for steaks yet. In order to get your meal you have to show up with the original stock certificates in hand. The value of the shares will be based priced on the day's closing price (for lunch, the day before's price is used). There's no such thing as a free lunch, the registered owner of the stock must surrender it to Smith & Wollensky which will add the shares to its own portfolio.

Whether or not it results in a lot of free steaks it's a neat publicity turn for the steakhouse. The witty ad took a tone of faux concern cataloging the effect of bankers receiving shares instead of cash bonuses. The ad bemoans steak and lobster left uneaten and promises they'll even take GM stock (although at less than a dollar a share, be prepared to bring quite a few shares). Although Smith & Wollensky has restaurants around the U.S.the offer is only available at the New York restaurant on Third Avenue. Smith & Wollensky has said it will accept certificates for any New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq-listed stock. The restaurant is where Warren Buffett holds his annual auctioned-off lunch. I wonder if this is how he's planning to pay.

Sake and cheese? It sounds a bit off doesn't it? In the U.S. sake is generally sipped warm from tiny porcelain cups at sushi joints. But what if we've got it all horribly wrong? What if sake should be treated with the same respect we give to fine wines, what if it should be poured into glasses that allow its aromas to gather, its color and legs to be seen and its flavors to be slowly sipped and savored? The offerings from Banzai Beverages make a good case for that. I got to taste some delicious sakes paired with some of Wisconsin's finest cheeses chosen for the occasion by the Barrie Lynn, the Cheese Impresario, at an event hosted by Learn About Wine in Los Angeles.

We started the event with Banzai Bunny sparkling sake, not something I would ever have thought I might enjoy but it has a nice effervescent fizz courtesy of a secondary fermentation. It's not really like a Champagne, I found its slightly citrusy sparkle to be more like a Vinho Verde.

As with any fermented grain beverage the making of the mash forms key importance for sake. Although sake is called rice wine it is really more akin to a beer or a whisky. One thing that makes sake, which is made from rice, different from other beverages is the focus on not just the type of rice but on how much of it is polished away. Before processing into mash for sake, the rice is polished to remove the protein and oils from the exterior of the rice grains leaving a starchy core. The finer sakes have more of the rice polished away, in fact a new ultra premium sake promises to remove a full 91 percent of the rice, making the sake from the remaining nine percent. As you might expect, it has a hefty price tag, $2,000 a bottle, earning it a someday space on my drinking "bucket list."

Even at the poshest of theaters, it's unheard of to be given shellfish.

Apparently, modern theaters are flouting tradition by expecting us to dine on a cheap triviality like popcorn. According to Reuters, Elizabethan theatergoers preferred oysters while they watched Shakespeare's canon take shape -- even the groudlings (those without proper seats who stood on the ground by the stage for a penny).

Oysters were reportedly most popular (and were probably the cheapest), and other "snacks" included crab and other shellfish like mussels, whelks, periwinkles, dried raisins and figs, hazelnuts, plums, cherries, peaches, baked blackberry and elderberry pies and sturgeon, "according to experts who excavated The Rose and The Globe theatres on the south bank of the River Thames."

"Oysters were in fact the staple diet of the poor, right up to the Victorian period, and certainly we find oyster shells by the thousand on nearly every archaeological site we do," senior Museum of London archaeologist Julian Bowsher who excavated the two theater sites told Reuters.

As someone who's paid just as much for popcorn at the movies as I've paid for a fine plate of oysters, I have to say, I think the Elizabethans had it better. You know, besides the way they smelled.

Is there a maker of fine chocolate candy that makes your mouth water just thinking about it? Who makes the most sumptuous chocolate truffle you've ever eaten? Which bakery makes the most magnificent cupcakes in the world? Can you recommend a bakery that makes cakes that are worth telling the world about? Which bakery makes the best cookies? If you know where to find the best chocolate, truffles, cupcakes, cakes and cookies, we want to hear from you!

The Luxist Readers' Choice Awards for Best in Sweets will be awarded based on your nominations and voting. We're currently seeking nominations for the best-of-breed in the following categories:

Best Chocolate Bar
Best Chocolate Candy
Best Cupcake
Best Cake
Best Cookie

One nomination per category, please. Submissions can be filed until February 15, 2010. Winners will be announced on March 1, 2010.

Only a few short steps away from the Champs-Elysées, is the world-renowned Four Seasons Hotel George V Paris. This world-renowned hotel in the heart of Paris is the Luxist Awards' Readers' Choice Winner for Best City Hotel.

The opulent hotel's gracious lobby is beautifully decorated with an impressive collection of objets d'art; the 17th-century tapestries adorning its walls are breathtaking. The hotel has a spirit that lives on in thoroughly reborn, highly advanced spaces. The Four Seasons George V Paris redefines luxury and impeccable service in the City of Light.

Rising eight stories above the city, the hotel was built in 1928. It offers 245 guest rooms with nearly one-quarter being suites. All feature unique architectural details and many feature private terraces overlooking Paris. The guest rooms are among the most spacious of all Paris hotels.The hotel is ideally situated in what is referred to as the "Golden Triangle of Paris". The River Seine is nearby as is the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, while some of the world's best shopping is a delightful 10 minute walk away.

Arguably the grandest, most magnificent ocean liner ever built, Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2 is the winner of the Luxist Awards' Readers' Choice Award for Best Caribbean Cruise. Queen Mary 2 is the flagship of Cunard, whose history dates back to 1839 when Her Majesty Queen Victoria awarded Sir Samuel Cunard of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the first ever license to deliver mail across the Atlantic Ocean.

While she is described as "timeless elegance", Queen Mary 2, which debuted in 2004, offers the latest luxury amenities, from the pampering services of the first Canyon Ranch SpaClub® at sea to a pool with a retractable roof, allowing it to be enjoyed in inclement weather. Queen Mary 2 also offers an award-winning intellectual and entertainment enrichment program led by prestigious experts in a variety of fields, including literature, the arts, politics, the sciences, culture, maritime history and academia.

The ship, which cost an estimated $800 million to build, is 1,132 feet long--113 feet longer than her predecessor Queen Mary, with space for 2,592 guests in lower berths and 3,056 total guest capacity, when including third and fourth berths. Her crew numbers 1,253.

The models may be dieting during New York Fashion Week but not everyone else is and Armani Ristorante has rolled out a new bar menu to entice those looking for a quick delicious nibble. Prices range from $8 (which gets you some house made ice cream or sorbet) to $28 for Misto alla Griglia-- grilled lamb chop, beef filet, veal filet, Cornish hen and selected vegetables in extra virgin olive oil. More adventurous palates might opt for Polpettine di Cinghiale alla Cacciatora-- wild boar "meatballs" , vegetable-mushroom sauce served with baby arugula and radicchio ($22) but there is also a vegetarian lasanga for those of a less carnivorous nature.

The restaurant continues to offer an international selection of fine wines by the bottle and by the glass, as well as an innovative array of cocktails including Il Diavolo made with tequila reposado, cassis, splash of lemon juice and topped with ginger ale as well as the Armani Martini, a blend of fresh orange juice, white rum, triple sec served with an orange slice. Armani / Ristorante 5th Avenue is open for lunch and dinner daily until 11 p.m. Monday - Saturday and until 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Of course, you don't have to stick to the gender stereotypes on this one. Men do enjoy chocolate, and I've met more than a handful of ladies who are happy to cut and light a double corona. So, feel free to mix and match as you see fit. You'll have all the tools you'll need to make the best choices, thanks to chocolate and cigar recommendations from Vin Lee, CEO of the Beverly Hills Cigar Club.

Some of the selections aren't surprising, according to Lee. "Obvious choices are the fine selections from Godiva, Lindt and Ghiradelli, but we thought we'd suggest some exotic chocolate indulgences you might not be aware of." He continues, "Chocolatiers can now be reached from anywhere around the globe. Our advisers did an exhaustive search, and the choices prove it was well worth it."

Let's start with eight chocolate recommendations that are sure to make your evening fantastic.