The 2026 DeLaurenti Grocery Top 20!
With 5,000 products in the shop, choosing our Top 20 each year comes with a guarantee: the 20 on the list are going to be really good, and thousands of other great products are going to be left off it. We’ve made our peace with that.
Nothing on this list repeats from last year, though three producers, Danieli, Monte’s, and Mitica, made it back with a different product. The result covers the bases: sweet, salty, spicy, crunchy, and a few good things to cook with.
Get the full set for $325, see all the items in one place on our site, or cherry-pick your favorites through the links below. The full set makes a generous gift for someone you love, or for yourself.
Caffe Umbria was founded in Seattle in 2001, and Gusto Crema is their flagship blend. It’s a medium roast built for espresso, with beans from Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia: creamy in the cup, with a sweetness that lasts through the finish. It’s the only coffee we use for espresso in our café. It also makes a good French press, ground fine and brewed strong.
2. CiCi’s Ginger Molasses Cookies
Christine Falatico Frey bakes these to order five days a week, from her Nana Julie’s recipes. They’re soft and chewy with crackly edges, and there’s just enough ginger to stand up to the molasses. A staff favorite here, and the reason some of us have stopped baking at home.
3. Giovanni Cogno Biscotti di Nocciola al Cioccolato
Bite-size hazelnut biscuits made with 30% PGI Piedmont hazelnuts and flecks of dark chocolate. They’re not too sweet, and the texture is light, somewhere between crunchy and crumbly. Good on their own, with coffee or tea, or with a glass of Moscato. It takes discipline not to finish the box in one sitting.
4. Danieli Taralli with White Wine
Last year’s list had Danieli’s traditional taralli. These are their lightly sweet cousins, handmade in Puglia from a dough of wheat flour, olive oil, white wine, and a little vanilla, boiled, then baked until crisp, then finished with a coat of granulated sugar. They land somewhere between a cookie and a cracker. Have them with coffee, a glass of dessert wine, or simply on their own.
5. Monte’s Sweet Pepper Tomato Sauce
The Monte family came to Brooklyn from the province of Avellino in 1906 and opened what became Monte’s Venetian Room, where Frank Sinatra and James Cagney ate this sauce. Three generations on, the family still makes it, warmly spiced, with vine-ripened California tomatoes they swear are every bit as good as the Italian ones. This is the sweet pepper version. Last year’s list had the original.
Utopick was founded in late 2016 by Paco Llopís and his wife Juana with the goal of creating amazing & unique chocolate that would delight their customers and also support local farmers for the long term. Their 70% Nicaragua (Nugu) bar plays it safe, but not safe. This is a dessert island bar. It has lingering notes of Lotus biscuits, red berries & citrus.
7. Good Honey San Diego Citrus
The Ashurst family has kept bees for five generations, since 1919. This honey comes from the orange groves around San Diego, where several kinds of citrus bloom together. You can taste all of them in the honey. It’s jammy, in the best way, and bright. The citrus bloom is short, so the harvesters must work fast to collect the honey. One taste will tell you why they do it.
8. Butternubs Salted Brown Butter Sables
French-style shortbread from the bakers behind Bakery Lorraine in San Antonio, handmade with European-style butter, unbleached flour, and vanilla beans. Rich and buttery, with a little caramel and a good hit of salt. The twelve cookies are individually wrapped. Not only does the wrapping keep them fresh, but it slows you down just a little. First year on our shelves.
9. Tutto Calabria Hot Spread Sauce
Tutto Calabria has been jarring Calabrian peppers since the 1970s, and was one of the first to sell them outside of Italy. This traditional Calabrian Hot Spread Sauce is a combination of long peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, garlic and vinegar. Warmly spiced, this sauce is perfect for anything from sandwiches, to pastas to condiments – it also makes a great topping for bruschetta.
Maison Marc is a family farm in Chemilly-sur-Yonne, in Burgundy, known since 1923 for its cornichons. The French know their Dijons, and Maison Marc’s is among the finest. It’s smooth and sharp, made and jarred on the farm. Try it with ham, sausages, roast beef, and vinaigrettes. You’ll never go back to the supermarket versions.
11. Piko Peppers Garlic Delight Hot Sauce
Piko Peppers grows its own hot peppers year-round in Quebec and builds each sauce around them. Garlic Delight is the newest, and it has been on Hot Ones. Fresh and fried garlic, fermented with the peppers into a creamy, tangy sauce. The heat is medium, a 4 on their 5-point scale. Good on tacos and chicken wings, and as a dip for raw vegetables.
12. Rancho Gordo Crimson Popping Corn
Rancho Gordo grows heirloom beans and corn, and theirs is the only brand we use in our kitchen. Make this crimson popping corn the old-fashioned way, on the stove, with a little oil, a lid, and medium-low heat. Shake the pan while it’s cooking so that nothing burns. We love it with salt and butter. Other favorite variations: grated Parmigiano Reggiano, truffle salt, or Spanish smoked pimentón.
Yes, the French have their cheesy snacks too, and these are a solid notch above the gas-station kind. Belin has made some of France’s favorite snacks since 1902, and these crunchy Emmentaler sticks are a staple there, with no preservatives or colorings. Add them to your antipasti plate, with a glass of wine or Champagne, or as a side to a good sandwich.
Acquerello is Carnaroli rice, grown, aged, and packed by the Rondolino family on their estate in the Vercelli province of Piedmont. Each grain goes through twenty steps, from aging to refining to enriching. The rice stays firm and takes in flavor, the surest way we know to serve a great risotto every time.
Spanish Marcona almonds are plumper, softer, and more buttery than the almonds you’re used to. Mitica fries these lightly in sunflower oil and tosses them with sea salt. Put out a bowl with cheese, charcuterie, or a glass of wine, or keep a bag on hand.
16. Spirit Bear Seafoods Smoked Coho Salmon
Spirit Bear Seafoods started in 2025 in Craig, Alaska, but the family has fished since the 1960s, when George Yates, a Haida fisherman, worked his troller in Southeast Alaska. His daughter Julie fished after him, and her son Bear runs the business today from the Julie Kristine, their troller. Every fish is caught by hook and line off Prince of Wales Island. The coho is smoked and seasoned with sea salt, brown sugar, garlic, and black pepper. Eat it from the can, on a cracker, or tossed with pasta. New this year.
17. Rosi’s Hot Oil
Two ingredients, olive oil and serrano peppers. Rosi’s was made for pizza, where it adds a smooth, warming heat, but it does the same for eggs, pasta, clams, bread, and vegetables. It comes in a tin. New this year.
18. La Trinquelinette Blackberry Jam
Made in small batches by a family business in Saint-Léger-Vauban, a village in Burgundy, from local fruit and unrefined brown sugar. Not too sweet, but sweet enough. Toasted baguette, French butter, this jam, and coffee. That’s breakfast.
19. Rustichella d’Abruzzo Bucatini
Rustichella has made pasta in Abruzzo since 1924, and chefs and home cooks both swear by it. Bucatini is a thick spaghetti with a pinhole running through the middle, and it’s one of our best-selling pastas. This is the classic for bucatini all’amatriciana, a favorite made from tomatoes, pancetta, and red pepper finished with Pecorino Romano. The recipe is in our cookbook, and every ingredient is in the shop.
20. Bruno’s Sliced Nippy Wax Peppers
The Bruno family settled in the San Joaquin Valley in 1926 to farm tomatoes and grapes. Their pickled peppers came from the family’s garden. They traded them with other farmers for eggs and peaches. Soon word spread. By 1954 the family was in the pepper business full-time. Their Italian wax peppers are still grown in the valley. Pickled in vinegar with a little garlic, from the original recipe. Nippy is between mild and hot. Sliced and ready for sandwiches or pizza or… you name it.