I’ve always had a predilection for bougie gourmet food stores. I chalk it up to the college winter breaks I spent working at Williams-Sonoma’s stock room. Each KitchenAid blender I unpacked, each bottle of (then hard to find) Sichuan peanut sauce I placed on the shelves made me aspire toward an adulthood that would afford me such luxuries. I imagined my gourmet kitchen: my $1,000 espresso machine, my Viking range, my Sub-Zero fridge.
While that lifestyle eluded me, I will admit to feeling a jolt of excitement each time I walk inside a gourmet food store and see the well-curated displays of kitchenware, high-end pantry items and specialty items. Take for example, Boards & Beez, in Mariemont. The shop, owned by Chelsey Berghausen, specializes in artistically designed charcuterie boards, but there’s a lot more to it. Are you a Michigan grad who misses the pimento cheese from Zingerman’s, in Ann Arbor? They’ve got that. Feel like reading that Ina Garten memoir tonight while enjoying her favorite cheese and wine? They’ve got all of that, too.
At a center display table, you’ll find gift-worthy cookbooks surrounded by marble mortar and pestles, ceramic garlic containers, Rookwood serving dishes and candles shaped like farmers market carrots and tomatoes. You can buy a host/hostess gift that includes an enamel platter, serving utensils and a ceramic bottle of Galantino olive oil, or a nifty gift for the cocktail lover that comes with three flavor-infused simple syrups and the recipe book “Cocktails and Canapes.” Even if you’re not shopping for gifts, this is the kind of place to treat yourself every once in a while.
The shop also serves sandwiches at lunch and reasonably priced take-out dinners such as saltimbocca or chicken marsala for two. Along with charcuterie boards, other food options include pastas, frozen pizzas from St. Francis Apizza, salads, and sauces. I picked up some delicious Oishii jumbo shrimp, a premium sustainably farmed shrimp from Thailand, for our pre-holiday meal this past Thanksgiving. It was some of the best shrimp cocktail I’ve ever eaten.
The reason I go back to Boards & Beez so often, though, is for the butter. They carry some of the best French butter you will find in Cincinnati, specifically Beurre de Baratte, which is so popular that you sometimes have to get on a waiting list to get it. If they’re all out, you can also pick up locally made French whipped sea salt butter from Parisian Pantry Co. that’s just as delicious. My wife and I will keep our butter on our kitchen counter all day, spreading it on cheap saltine crackers from Kroger. Sure those crackers aren’t fancy, but they’re so close to perfect that I think even Ina Garten herself would approve.
Boards & Beez, 6836 Wooster Pike, Mariemont, 513-914-5004, boardsandbeez.com.
Highly Recommended is a weekly spotlight on some of food writer Keith Pandolfi’s favorite finds as he eats his way across Greater Cincinnati. Come back every Tuesday for more. Still hungry? Sign up for Keith’s At the Table newsletter at bit.ly/atthetablesignup.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: A gourmet food store in Mariemont evokes an Ina Garten lifestyle
Reporting by Keith Pandolfi, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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