FormaggioKitchen

Best Gourmet Grocer/Food Hall
The Readers Choice nominees for Best Gourmet Grocer/Food Hall include one that started out with a small store in Texas and today, 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.

Dean & DeLuca
Dorothy Lane Market
Harrods Food Hall
Whole Foods
Zabar's

Best Online Gourmet Food
The Readers' Choice nominees for the Best Online Gourmet Food 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.

ChefShop.com
Dean & DeLuca
Di Bruno Brothers
iGourmet.com
Zingerman's Mail Order

Best Caviar Retailer
The Readers' Choice nominees for Best Caviar Retailer 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.

Caviarteria
Caviar House & Prunier
Caviar Russe
Petrossian
Tsar Nicoulai Caviar

Best Bread Bakery
The Readers' Choice nominees 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.

La Brea Bakery
Le Pain Quotidien
Max Poilaine
Metropolitan Bakery
Zingerman's Bakehouse

Best Cheese Shop
The Readers' Choice nominees are among 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.

Farmstead
Formaggio Kitchen
Murray's Cheese
Neal's Yard Dairy
Pastoral

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