Holiday Gift Guide: Food & Provisions
Pretzel Shortbread, Cougar Gold Cheese, Kringle, Salted Caramels, Ice Cream...
This week on LAST CALL we’ll have you covered with Holiday Gift Guides focusing on Holiday Advent Calendars, Drinks & Spirits, Books & Cookbooks, The Spirit of Italy, and Stocking Stuffers. Today’s Holiday Gift Guide is devoted to Food & Provisions. This is a super-sized dispatch and will likely be truncated in your Email, so be sure to click the “View Entire Message” link to expand.
Today’s LAST CALL Holiday Gift Guide is available to all readers thanks to the generous support of Casamara Club.
Tired of choosing between lackluster flavored seltzers and sickly sweet sodas and mocktails when they wanted a non-alcoholic treat at the end of the day, Casamara Club founders Jason LaValla and Erica Johnson took inspiration from Italian amaro and aperitivo culture to create a line of adult sodas, each with complex flavors and an extra dry finish. The result is a line of critically acclaimed, sophisticated, and refreshing botanical sodas that have gone on to become the NA of choice for every kind of drinker.
This holiday season, stock up on a variety case of these Italian amaro leisure sodas in bottles or cans to have on hand for invigorating non-alcoholic options with complex flavors that are perfect on their own, as a mixer, or to accompany your favorite aperitivo spread.
Alta: Classic Italian aperitivo, reminiscent of a Negroni.
Como: Breezy Alpine-style soda, inspired by Braulio.
Onda: Coastal, Sicilian-style flavor, inspired by the warm, herbaceous flavor notes of Averna.
Sera: Citrus- and spice-forward take on the Aperol Spritz.
And be sure to check out their latest release, Superclasico, a bittersweet, Italian-style aperitivo cocktail-strength non-alcoholic drink in a supercharged 8-ounce can. is ready to drink straight from the can, or pour it into an ice-filled glass garnished with an orange slice.
You can find Casamara Club botanical sodas on menus at Michelin star restaurants, James Beard award winning bars, and some of the best cafes and independent retailers in the country.
“Your leisure awaits…”
Holiday Gift Guide: Food & Provisions
Longtime readers of LAST CALL will likely recall some repeat appearances from last year’s Holiday Gift Guide, but I hope you’ll indulge me as one, there are thousands of new readers among us since last year; two, I’m a creature of habit; and three, these are items I truly crave and support, so they’re worth an encore.
—BTP
Sweet Things
O&H Danish Bakery Kringle
When I lived in Seattle my father would ship me a Danish kringle, an oval-shaped pastry with a flaky, buttery crust and a sweet filling, from the local Scandinavian bakery Larsen’s every year for my birthday. I tried to explain that it would likely be cheaper and save on shipping if I picked it up myself as the Ballard bakery was just four miles away from my apartment, but he insisted he liked having it arrive as a “surprise” delivered straight to my door.
Since moving to Brooklyn, I’ve started my own holiday tradition ordering myself a kringle from O&H Danish Bakery in Racine, Wisconsin (I have no personal or familial connections to Wisconsin beyond being good friends with a number of people who hail from the state) to warm up in the oven on Christmas morning. My go-to is their Cream Cheesecake Kringle, made with 100% Wisconsin cream cheese with a white icing racing stripe. There are many more festive kringles to consider among the Seasonal Favorites, like Christmas Fudge, Reindeer Tracks, I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas, and Santa’s Secret Christmas. Or maybe drop off a Brandy Old-Fashioned Kringle, made with brandy, caramel, and cherries with vanilla icing blended with orange zest, at your favorite bar over the holidays for a sweet treat for the hard-working bartenders.
You can often find a rotating seasonal selection of O&H Kringles at Trader Joe’s (it’s usually Almond this time of year) if you want to save on shipping and give it a test run.
$24.99 plus shipping (O&H Danish Bakery)
McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream
I’m thrilled that Oregon’s Salt & Straw Ice Cream recently opened two scoop shops in Manhattan, but while pints are thankfully available in NYC, I still long for easy access to those McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream limited-release flavors only in their California stores. An updated version of their popular 5-pint Holiday Bundle is back, now featuring Pumpkin Spiced Latte, Martinelli’s Apple Cider & Cranberry Jam, Salted Caramel Chip, Reindeer Tracks, and Peppermint Stick (a favorite of Friend of LAST CALL Kendra Borowski).
But what I would really want for Christmas is their limited-edition collaboration with California’s own See’s Candies with flavors like Vanilla with California Brittle, Coffee with Molasses Chips, Banana Cream with Toffee-ettes, and Chocolate with Polar Bear Paws. I had the chance to get a sneak-peek sample of each of these at the Fancy Food Show this summer but they’re sadly not available in NYC.
Holiday Bundle: $58.00 plus shipping (McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream)
Assorted Pints: $12 plus shipping (McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream)