I see a gourmet glut a-commin’.  What with the loudest new year’s celebration in our lifetime not so many weeks away, every pricy purveyor stands ready to fling their finest foodstuffs, not to mention those tony rivers of tiny bubbles soon expected to bust their banks.

But it’s not just the millennial hoopla that has the fois gras flying.  As this economic boom thing just keeps pumping away, more and more Americans, even the cyber babies, are adding non-techno, taste treats to their must-have lists.  Something good has to go in the back of the Land Rover. 

Luscious goose and duck liver, from France, upstate New York and California, has had a sales jump of 150% since ‘90.  Caviar is up about 30% since about that same time, some due to price bumps for, frankly, generally better beads. 

Furthermore, this newly gentrified generation (I call them gen G, for gourmet, gluttony, gilt and goodies) goes for a whole new extra bag of golden groceries.  While truffles, on every upscale menu in the last eighteen months, are subject to nature, (last year’s supply was down and the prices through the farm house roof – this year trade war tariffs have doubled the price), other newly popular treasures tempt the trendy:  the steaks from Peter Lugar’s, olive oil blessed by Marcella Hazan,  100 year old balsamic vinegar, fifteen dollar a pound goat cheese,  great cabernets in the six thousand dollar range.  With Martha Stewart at the K-Mart the bar has gone up, up, up.

Here, then, are a few caveats, concerns and consultations. 

Let’s start with the classics.  With the demise of that union of soviets, caviar runs a little freer, what with those nasty Kremlinites not hording the good stuff.  This doesn’t mean that it’s gotten easier to buy the best, or that shady dealings don’t still dominate.  I have absolutely no interest in some dissolute dolt dishing up blobs of beluga from huge metal mixing bowls with oversized stainless spoons, like, say, during the annual Macy’s vs. Zabars sturgeon egg rolling contest in Manhattan. They call it a sale.  I call it a travesty.  In fact, raw metal should never touch those fragile globes, hence Our Mother of Pearl or the carved bone spoons pictured in every Tsarist family photo.  Even the insides of those deep sea blue original tins are coated with epoxy glaze.

At these prices, brand names should give way to personal introduction.  You may not know your butcher, but your caviar connection should care about you as least as much as your plastic surgeon.  Make them expect you back for more.  Get a name from your top regular restaurateur or clever caterer.  Make sure somebody suffers if you’re stiffed.

If you’re sporting for more than a few ounces, you have the right to see and taste, especially if the roe is being carefully culled from a two kilo original tin.  The beads (eggs) should be firm (not hard) and shiny, not broken, muddy or mushy.  And the smell should be lightly of the sea, but fresh and clean.

Fact is, while beluga has lovely, light flavors, it’s really the starter model for the well set.  Some even call it bland.  Curious connoisseurs prefer the variety and depth, the golden or slightly emerald tinges and unique nutty tang of Osetra.  It comes from a slightly smaller sturgeon (eight to twelve hundred pounds instead of a ton of Beluga), and is actually more available in better shape than it was a decade ago.  You used to worry that you were getting light Osetra masquerading as more expensive big B.  Now we find out that smallish or interestingly hued Beluga is sometimes being passed off as the big O. 

For my money and my mouth I still miss the best of the currently banned black babies from Iran. Although no longer legally imported, Iranian roe comes from their the deeper, colder and formerly cleaner end of the Caspian Sea. The great flavor and finish (after taste) of perfect and affordable Sevruga, the smallest and most plentiful roe, is one of the greatest mouthfuls of pleasure in life.  I always try to scarf four or seven lovely ounces in the Paris airport just before boarding for home.

As to those little livers, nearly the same should apply.  These days the direct purveyors can be called into account pretty quickly.  Choose one chefs prefer or the stuffs they sell themselves. 

Get dated items handed to you personally from the case or on-line from the source.  Something Fe-Ex’d in foam can make the weekend sing.

Quality here is also mainly common sense.  Weather it’s in a terrine or simply slabbed, the liver should be silky, smooth and melt-in-your-mouth soft.  It should dissolve on the tongue, smell fresh and slightly sweet, and be free of veins or blood.  Pretty near pink, not grey or a fashionable taupe.

The French stuff comes with a double your price tariff, and they don’t always like to send their best to the likes of us.  The stuff from Sonoma is on again off again.  Probably the best these days outside to the Southwest of France comes from the Hudson Valley, or sometimes Israel, in Israel.  

And now to bubbles.  Here’s a year to switch to gin.  Import figures are way up, as restaurants and retailers prepare to celebrate, but Champagne sales are actually flat and prices are generally steady (or still, as in not effervescent)  which means that to cash in on the crush, the

top cuvees need to up the ante of their most popular showbottles  The folks at Studio 54 were told to order in April or loose out on the better brands.  And there’s a shop in my neighborhood that displays Moet with a count down message board that warns of  impending scarcity in the same fallacious fashion as all those national debt boards now relegated to counting our hotly contested surplus.

I say buy early and on sale.  Store that favorite font until the night in question or explore new finds, well in advance, and lay in a supply.  Score a magnum or larger – those big sizes often produce better balance and flavor – and keep at a steady cool temperature before chilling for the main event.  Have one good gulp then switch to chardonnay, or vodka, or Tequila or Evian.  In fact, the best time to buy bubbles may be sometime mid January, when it all might go on sale.  This, in plenty of time for the actual millennial lift off, which is in fact January of 2001.

A brief mention of truffles is worth a thought.  This is certainly a moment to indulge on a trip to Rome, and not at home.  They are really expensive this year, and doubled with the tariff.  We’re talking $3200 a pound.  Expect most retailers to require a pre-payed, pre-order, and restaurants using them to be at the four star level. 

My favorite ploy is to beg some of the rice they’re kept in for a little transcendent risotto, or an egg also held in the rice, that has committed osmosis and gone all fungal funky.  It’s a cheaper thrill.

And now to the newly treasured. 

Extra virgin olive oil sales have gone up about 2000% in the last twenty years. Whether from a consortium called Colivita or some Tuscan estate it’s a practice of blending to achieve a

signature style.  Color doesn’t always suggest taste.  Dark green can mean light or deep, peppery or smooth,  and a single grove press may not ultimately build your favorite flavors.  It’s all healthy, and the choice is yours.  Experiment with the occasional $30 bottle, but most important, keep it somewhere dark and cool.  And buy it from someone who treats it well. 

In fact, with the late 80’s freeze in Tuscany, much of what’s labeled such a product is actually from Umbria.  And some “products of Italy” are from Tunisia or Spain.  “Product of” means sensibility and style, bought and blended, then marketed to the world, and it’s just fine, thanks.

Oh, and don’t waste that unfiltered first, cold pressed, estate-bottled flagon in a frying pan. It won’t burn until past 600 o, but it does loose some of it’s subtlety at the super hots. Drizzle (yes, there is a good use for that word) it on a soup just before serving, or on really good, crusty bread, or even on tender ravioli filled with ricotta and white truffles, if you have any laying around.

I love the story of how balsamic vinegar got to this country.  Chuck Williams, hardware store owner turned housewares guru, found a little bottle of Fine brand in a department store in Milan.  He did a little homework and realized just how special a splash he’d found.  The company wouldn’t sell to some American, so he bought it retail, thereby requiring a resale at about $15 a pop.  Years later they relented and it dipped to seven bucks.  Now every corner grocer has some version.

This supposedly healing elixor and friend to sundried tomatoes can run from under ten bucks to hundreds of dollars a bottle.  The difference is in the making and in the aging.  It should be from around Modena, in northern Italy, not from somewhere near St. Helena in the Napa Valley.  It’s never white,  and it gets it’s flavors from a carefully maintained starter or mother (that includes

sugar) and the marrying of many batches, aged in a whole host of different kinds of wooden barrels, right down to the last little juniper wood tub. Juniper.  The process is so arduous that until Chuck went national, it was usually only made for family use, given at the birth of a child, passed to the next generation to be carefully dribbled out for extreme moments of pleasure.  

Here price really does connect to quality, and the key for me is that it really shouldn’t be used on everything from Cobb salad to kreplach. 

My final fling should be at beef.  With ground patties at groceries turning out to include pork and the dreaded “what not”, a good slab of steak becomes even more treasured.  Organic and free range, you can go for an Argentinean import, now legally in our borders for the first time in sixty years, or opt for the steak house secret stash.  The first requires some retraining, the right kind of sea salt and a hard-wood fire.  The second screams for serious dry aging and a big bottle of Bordeaux. 

Or go Kobe, that tender Japanese treasure that comes from cows carefully rubbed with olive oil (possibly not Tuscan  -  were you following before?) and coddled like nobodies kitties.  At $100 an ounce it’s no wonder it often comes with it’s own table top grill.

So don’t go shopping for the very best without the same kind of homework applied to the acquisition of great art or good sticks.  And remember, ----------- emptor, buyer be hungry.