Drool Worthy Sites

The culinary industry seems to have been slow to embrace the web. While there are a number of notable food bloggers and loads of great recipe sites (a handful of great technique driven sites have been cropping of late as well thanks to the proliferation of video tools), the retail side of things seems to be dominated by brick-and-mortar stalwarts like Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table and online giants like Amazon and Cooking.com. All of this has amounted to equivalent of the mega mart being the only place to try and buy high quality equipment and ingredients. While this is all well and good, the nature of the beast is that small and local tend to offer better quality and price than big and, well, far-off. For that reason, it is difficult to find truly great items among the mass of mediocre on most sites.
For this reason, I collect bookmarks of good sites like Hummels and doilies. This weekend I had some time to peruse a few cooking magazines and came away with the following gems worth passing along.

• Artisanal Cheese – Delicious delicious cheese! Due to my personal affinity for cheese, I have known about this one for a while, but like a smack addict, the convenience of a local vendor often trumps price and quality. That being said, if you are looking for truly high quality and unique cheese, this is really the only place you should shop.
• Honolulu Fish Company – Indianapolis has gotten a lot better in terms of being able to get fresh fish. That being said, the Midwest fish selection is far from perfect and lacks variety. If you’re willing to pay the price though, Honolulu Fish Company offers a wide variety of fresh Pacific fish (Tuna, Mako, Mahimahi, etc.) that they will overnight to you. The videos on their site, literally made my mouth water.
• Korin – Japanese knives are all the rage right now. I have replaced a number of my heavy European models with Globals, a Kyocera ceramic and a Shun, but these are still fairly commercial for the traditionally artisan knife makers of Japan. If you want truly magnificent knives created in the same tradition of the sword makers of Samurai, check out Korin who offer a tremendous variety of magnificent blades for all purposes (including a particularly disturbing noodle cutting knife.

I am always on the lookout for additional resources and will try and share more in the future. If you have any reputable high-quality sites you would like to share, please add them in the comments.

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