Caleb Zigas of La Cocina, Ruth Reichl, and Alice Waters, at the Good Food Awards.

Ruth Reichl was standing in front of a gigantic American flag hanging like a banner along the wall of the Ferry Building on Friday, January 13th. It was a backdrop worthy of any Presidential hopeful stumping for votes in the heartland, but here, the stars and stripes were evoking not just Mom and apple pie but Mom's apple pie, and maybe great-granddaddy's moonshine, and now their kids' apple-whiskey chutney and curried cauliflower pickles. It was time to welcome the room of makers and media, gathered in San Francisco for the 2nd annual Good Food Awards, a celebration of the best of artisanal food production from coast to coast.

"Most of you are too young to have grown up in the white-bread world that I did," said Reichl. Every cheese was sliced and wrapped in plastic, all strawberries were huge and tasted like cotton. This changed, slowly, through the work of pioneers like Alice Waters, sitting off to one side of the podium, as well as dozens of other food pioneers. Reichl remembered the first time she walked into The Cheeseboard, in Berkeley and was handed a taste of Laura Chenel's Sonoma-made fresh goat cheese. Reichl lived on it all that summer, and knew that she had to meet the woman making something so new (to American tastes) and so delicious. Then there was "Artists of the Earth," an article she wrote for California magazine in the early 1980s, profiling nine men and women making a difference in the food world and beyond. "They are some of California's most valuable resources," she wrote then, "...perfectionists who work very hard not because they expect to get rich but simply because they expect to get the best."

Walking through Chino Ranch with Alice a few years later, she was amazed at the quality of produce surrounding them. Corn so sweet it needed no cooking. Strawberries so intensely fragrant that every fellow traveler on the small plane she and Alice were taking from San Diego to Oakland came up and begged for a berry off the flats they were carrying in their laps. "Every person said, 'I forgot strawberries could smell like that! Please, can I just have one?'" she recounted. "And I watched Alice give away that night's dessert for Chez Panisse, because how could she say no?"

"Back then, I never could have dreamed how huge the change was going to be. We now live in a country that has the best produce in the world...We are reclaiming our edible heritage. "Thank you for giving us the America we once dreamed we could have."

After this came the awards, 99 products in eight categories (coffee, chocolate, charcuterie, pickles, preserves, cheese, beer, spirits). There were no single winners; instead, each category had a fat handful of top picks, from seven coffee roasters to 14 preserve-makers. The winners, like food-world Olympians, got medallions stamped in the shape of the tools of their trade--a cleaver, a canning jar--strung on wide red-white-and-blue ribbons to hang around their necks.

It was hard not to feel a little hometown, homestate pride at the fine showing the Bay Area, and California, made in the final running. Two local beers made the cut, at opposite ends of the brewing spectrum: from San Leandro, Drake's Brewing Company's high-alcohol, rich-as-devil's-food Drakonic Imperial Stout, and from Petaluma, the Lagunitas Brewing Company's spritzy, grapefruity ale, dubbed A Lil' Sumpin' Sumpin'. In the coffee category, Equator Coffees from San Rafael won for its fair trade/organic Ethiopian Watadera beans.

In pickles, California snagged three of the 11 winning picks, including Farmhouse Culture's Smoked Jalapeno Sauerkraut, Emmy's Pickles and Jams' Turmeric Cauliflower, and the Devil Sauce made by Let's Be Frank, of grass-fed hot-dog truck fame. (And we'll give a California hug to OlyKraut, which was founded by Sash Sunday, a former San Franciscan who got into the kraut biz shortly after relocating to Olympia, WA. Plus, she makes nettle kraut!)

OlyKraut, from left: Sash Sunday, Alexia Crousnillon, Nate Massé (not pictured: Summer Bock)

We tied with New York in the cutthroat preserves category, winning for Artisan Preserves' Orange Honey Marmalade, Chez Pim's Blueberry-Golden Raspberry Preserves, and Wine Forest Wild Foods' Wild Elderberry Shrub.

Wylie Whiskey, from left: Matt Jones, Garrett Hale, Sarah Swearington.

It's a cascade of riches from our part of the Golden State: Costa Rican chocolate bars from Dandelion Chocolate in SF; white whiskey from Wylie Howell Spirits in Petaluma; Carmody (my favorite!) and whole-milk ricotta from Bellwether Farms in West Marin; yogurt cheese from Sonoma's St. Benoit, pork, rabbit, and duck terrine from Fatted Calf in SF and Napa; speck from Oakland wine bar/salumeria Adesso.

Dandelion Chocolate: Alice Nystrom, Todd Masonis

Come the next morning, many of the previous night's winners were out in force at the Good Food Awards Marketplace, a tasting/selling spread of tables organized by category set up under the archways of the Ferry Building. Reichl, who now runs the specialty food (and content) site Gilt Taste, was on hand with a keen appetite, even after a late-night dinner with Alice and friends at Locanda in the Mission. Already, she's tried the chilaquiles and shrimp ceviche at the Primavera market stand, and tells me, joyfully, of the "best breakfast sandwich" she's ever had, from 4505 Meats: a soft, buttery brioche bun piled with a maple-bacon sausage patty, an oozy-centered fried egg, and a frizz of snappy peppercress. Speaking of her talk the previous night, she laughed at the thought of trying to profile just eight makers now. "At the time, it was hard to find even eight people, enough to write about. I had to include a produce distributor, a guy who was raising pigs and lambs for Chez Panisse. Now, that would be ridiculous. You'd have to write an encyclopedia!"

If anything, she thinks we're underestimating the strength and staying power of the artisan movement. Already, the food makers' landscape has changed drastically in just the past five years. In the next five, ten years, what will it look like?

Kathryn Lukas of Farmhouse Culture

There's no doubt, though, that the movement is fostering ever-closer relationships between chefs, makers and farmers. These products, from basil vodka to sea-vegetable kraut, are only as good as their raw ingredients. Recounting a cabbage blight that decimated the California crop last year, Farmhouse Culture founder Kathryn Lukas quoted Let's Be Frank's Larry Bain, laughing, "It's hard when you're in business with God."

It's no secret that the Bay Area has a bounty of food artisans and purveyors. But did you know that we also have no shortage of innovative premium chocolatiers? From small shops like Sôcôla, Chocolatier Blue and Coco Delice to larger and more established San Francisco companies like Recchiuti and Charles Chocolates; the Bay Area abounds with locally-made, hand-crafted truffles and chocolates for every taste and preference.

It's not surprising that our home-grown chocolate shops all seem to use the highest quality ingredients, with many utilizing organic local creams and butters alongside fruits and nuts purchased from nearby farmers. And, as all truffles should be, these confections are also made with trained and sure hands, often artistically sculpted or topped with elegant etchings. Overall, the chocolates and truffles produced locally use the finest ingredients, are superbly made and are lovely to look at.

So if you're shopping for a little chocolate indulgence this holiday season, keep it local. You won't be disappointed.

Following are my top-ten picks for local holiday chocolates.

Photo credit: Emiko Taki

Sôcôla
And if you're in the mood for some familial holiday warmth this season, Sôcôla offers a hearty dose. Susan and Wendy Lieu are two charismatic local sisters who live and breath chocolate. And just to keep their product really local, these sisters purposely use other Bay Area family-owned products to make each handmade truffle, including organic Strauss Family Creamery products and E. Guittard chocolate.

This holiday season Sôcôla is showcasing four special treats in their By the Fireside Holiday 2010 collection:

• Chai Baba Chai -- an exotic blend of Assam tea with cardamom, cloves, black peppercorn and cinnamon
• Hazelnut Praline -- sort of a refined Nutella
• Hot in Hia -- a delicate champagne truffle made in honor of the Lieu sisters' grandmother Hia
• Pumpkin Burnt Caramel -- a blend of holiday pumpkin pie spices, burnt caramel, Hawaiian sea salt and a splash of brandy

You can buy Sôcôla online or at various locations, including:
San Francisco: Bi-Rite Market; Whole Foods Potrero Hills and SOMA;
East Bay: The Pasta Shop; Market Hall

Coco Délice Fine Chocolates
If you're in the mood for a truly French-style traditional truffle -– chocolate filled with ganache that is hand-rolled and finished with cocoa powder -– you'll want to seek out Coco Délice. In addition to making extraordinary chocolate, this Emeryville company also works to find a balance between business and environmental conservation. Dedicated to using local ingredients, Coco Délice uses fruit and nuts from Bay Area farmers in their ganaches, cream from Berkeley Farms, and wine from the Sonoma Valley in their Wine & Spirits collection.

I spoke with Chef Dennis, who says his favorite holiday treats this year are:

• Bittersweet Cognac and Bourbon Pecan Truffles
• Peppermint Bark -- made with dark and white chocolate, peppermint oil, candy and cocoa (which is sold exclusively at Andronico's Market)
• The Holiday Cube assorted gift box that contains hand-rolled truffles, caramelized chocolate covered almonds, and set of dark chocolate disks with cocoa nubs

Coco Délice can be purchased online or at various Bay Area locations, including many Whole Foods and Andronico's stores.

TCHO
TCHO is making its own batch of high-quality chocolates this year. Always fair trade and always first-rate, TCHO offers various holiday gifts for the obsessive chocolate lover and/or baker in your life. A few holiday offerings are:

• Holiday gift boxes wrapped in designs by Dutch graphic artist Max Kisman
• Hot and Cold Drinking Chocolate -- which is made to be prepared as a thick and luscious European-style drink
• TCHO-a-Day -- a no-nonsense container filled with lovely little chocolate bars

TCHO is available for purchase online, at their factory store in San Francisco (where you can also take a tour), and at various Bay Area locations including: Berkeley Bowl, Bi-Rite Market, various Whole Foods and Real Foods.

Recchiuti Confections
One of my longtime favorite chocolate companies, I have always relied on Recchiuti during the holiday season. The elegant etchings and drawings on their truffles are the first clue to how exquisite these confections really are. Yet as often happens with a favorite restaurant, I think I've gotten stuck in a rut with their truffle menu. So instead of getting my tried and true Fleur de Sel Caramels or Peanut Butter Pucks this year, I think I'll try some of their seasonal selections:

• Caramels to the Third Power -- salted caramel, butterscotch salted caramel, and chocolate caramel
• Peppermint Thins -- a spin-off of Junior Mints, these peppermint thins are made with organic peppermint leaves from the Willamette valley and peppermint oil
• Pairing Boxes (four types of chocolates created specifically to pair with with whiskey, wine, beer and spirits for your holiday celebrations

Recchiuti is available for purchase online, at their Ferry Building store, and at various Bay Area locations including:
Andronico's, Draeger's, Bi-Rite Market, Rainbow Grocery, and Village Market in Oakland.

Chocolatier Blue
Trained in the intricacies of French chocolate making, Chris Blue is dedicated to making French-inspired chocolate truffles at a local level. With an emphasis on classical truffle-making, Chocolatier Blue uses Domori and Amedei chocolate, Five-Star organic butter, and seasonal fruits from the Berkeley Farmer's Market.

Chris Blue has come up with a few holiday flavors this year using various flavors, including gingerbread; sugar cookie; eggnog; rum-soaked currents; and holiday spices.

You can purchase Chocolatier Blue truffles online, at their stores in Berkeley and Mill Valley, or at Palio D’Asti in San Francisco.

Michael Mischer Chocolates
I have a soft spot in my heart for Michael Mischer Chocolates as my family and I like to walk there on hot summer nights for cups of Mr. Mischer's creamy gelato. My husband also usually places a few truffles from this Oakland store in my stocking each Christmas (and I end up eating at least one as part of my holiday breakfast). Made with single-origin chocolate of Grand Cru quality from Venezuela or Ecuador, these truffles have an elegant chocolate taste that if full of nuance. Each is also hand sculpted so they are quite pretty.

In addition to its full range of truffles, Michael Mischer Chocolates is also offering three holiday flavors:

• Gingerbread Caramel -- made with a spice blend that tastes like a gingerbread cookie
• Advocaat -- made with a Dutch egg liqueur
• Mint Marshmallow -- filled with a homemade marshmallow flavored with mint oil

You can purchase Michael Mischer Chocolates at Mr. Mischer's store on Grand Avenue in Oakland, at Cocoa Bella, Fog City News, or Bi-Rite Market. You can also purchase directly through emailing the company (through their web site) or calling the store directly.

Charles Chocolates
A long-time local favorite, Chuck (Charles) Siegel has been making local truffles in San Francisco since 1987. Beautifully crafted, with both sculpted shapes and etched drawings, Charles Chocolates offers various assortments and selections that are perfect for a holiday gift.

This year Charles Chocolates is offering a:

• Winter Collection Collection -- Fleur de Sel Caramels with images of snowflakes and raindrops decorating the top of each
• Holiday Collection Edible Chocolate Box -- an assortment of their most popular confections set in an edible chocolate box

You can purchase Charles Chocolates online, at their flagship Westfield Shopping Center store, and at various Whole Foods locations.

The Xocolate Bar
Located in North Berkeley, Xocolate Bar creates both classic and vegan artisanal chocolates amd truffles using organic, seasonal and local ingredients whenever possible. With new flavors presented weekly, they make sure that at least half their selection is vegan.

Some holiday flavors include:

• Gingerbread Truffle -- made with black currents
• The Salted Chile Makeout Truffle -- made with chai and maca root (an aphrodisiac)
• The Tamarind Mango Agave -– their most popular vegan option

The Xocolate Bar is also offering a Community Supported Chocolate program where can sign up to pick up a monthly box of handmade chocolates at a designated neighborhood location. Each box will contain handmade chocolates made with seasonal, sustainable and/or organic ingredients.

You can purchase Xocolate Bar confections at their store in North Berkeley, or on their site through Foodoro.

Barolovento Chocolates
Peter Bryden started making chocolates after tasting the dried cherry of his dreams from Smit Ranch. He imagined the moist plump fruit encased in chocolate and it was so good, he started Barolovento Chocolates to sell them. Barolovento now sells many different types of chocolates using single-source Venezuelan chocolate at Bay Area farmers' markets. This holiday season Peter has a few specialty items available in addition to his normal selection of shaped chocolates and truffles.

• Chocolate-covered Almonds (from EGB farms, these are panned in chocolate for even coating and sold in tubes)
• Holiday truffles (flavors include gingerbread, Fresh Mint (made by infusing cream with fresh spearmint)
• Meyer Lemon Zest truffles (which are created using fresh local Meyer lemons); and Kirsch Liqueur truffles.

Barolovento Chocolates accepts email and phone orders by calling (510) 238-8787. You can also purchase their chocolates at the following farmers' markets: Marin Civic Center, Grand Lake in Oakland, and Palo Alto. The Pasta Shop in Rockridge and Berkeley also sells their fleur de sel caramels and small logo bars with sea salt.

Because Christmas falls on a Saturday this year, Barolovento Chocolates is opening their kitchen for sales December 20 - 24 from 9am-4pm. Stop by at 638 2nd street Oakland to pick up some holiday treats.

Alegio
Located in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto, Alegio makes classic French truffles and chocolates. Panos Panagos, a very charming Frenchman, and Robbin Everson, the talented chef, work together to bring hand-crafted truffles made on site to their little neck of the Bay Area. Alegio also sells truffles by Enric Rovira's and Claudio Corallo. Vegan and organic confections are available and all chocolate used is fair trade.

A few truffles worth checking out for the holiday season are the:

• Sea Salt Caramel Truffle -- a consistent best seller
• Habanera -- which has won a few awards
• Grapefruit Caramel

Alegio chocolates can be purchased online or at their store at 1511 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley

Trevor Morris is a lot like any other Bay Area foodie. When he tastes something great, he can't wait to use it, share it, and think about how it could become part of his culinary repertoire. But as the co-founder of Gelateria Naia, his first thought upon tasting anything particularly delicious is, Could I make gelato out of this?

As anyone who's watched the original Japanese Iron Chef knows, just about anything can be made into something resembling a frozen dessert. (Tasting the buttered lobster ice cream sold at a popular ice-cream shop in Bar Harbor, Maine remains a low point of my tongue's career.) Even as simple a flavor as coffee can be trickier to perfect than one might assume.

The company's years of dedication have paid off. Naia now has 4 gelato shops around the Bay Area, and freestanding counters in numerous Whole Foods stores throughout Northern California.

But it wasn't until last week's Fancy Food Show in San Francisco that I tasted gelati that transported me from the fluorescent-lit Moscone Center to the arched pergolas of a Bologna side street, to where I spent many a euro (and lazy afternoon) at La Sorbetteria Castiglione, that gastronomic city's best gelateria. And it wasn't in the Italian-food aisle, but California-made at Gelateria Naia.

What set these gelati apart was their purity and depth of flavor. Not too sweet, they were satiny smooth, pillowy and cool on the tongue, nipping right from the tongue straight to the brain's joy button. There was a deep, mellow coffee, rich but unbitter, made with Blue Bottle beans. There was a lovely, perfumey Earl Gray tea gelato steeped with a Numi Organic blend. A St. George Spirits single-malt gelato called out to be drenched with a shot of whiskey like a grown-up affogato. Chocolate was suave and mellow, the raw material provided by Tcho.

What was the one thing all these flavors had in common? They were all locally inspired, featuring some of the best artisanal products from around the Bay Area.

Part of the reasoning is, of course, a dedication to staying local. The company already gets many of its ingredients from nearby farms and producers, listing the day's sources on chalkboards in each of its stores. Yogurt from Pavel's, honey from Palamino Farms, fruits and nuts from Fiddyment Farms and B&B Ranch, among others, have become an integral part of Naia's offerings. As Morris notes,

"We opened our first store in 2002 and a year later decided to stop using the semi-finished ingredients we were importing from Italy. They tasted fine but it was a silly way to make gelato. Why buy chocolate from Italy when Guittard is right down the road? Why import pistachios when we can call and discuss different roasts with the grower in Roseville? And why would you ever use coffee flavoring when you can just use coffee beans?

But there's also the undeniable business sense of cross-branding with a company that already has its dedicated fans, as Blue Bottle does. Most important, though, said Trevor as he handed me yet another spoonful to taste, is the brainstorming and resource-sharing that happens when obsessive geniuses get together.

Instead of trying to learn everything about coffee in order to make a superlative coffee gelato, you go to a guy like Blue Bottle founder James Freeman, a man who probably spends most of his waking hours thinking about coffee. (Who needs sleep, when there's espresso?) And you sit down and talk, and by the time you get up from the table, you've hashed out a new cold-brewing method of getting big-bean flavor into your product without astringency or bitterness. Or you come back to the test kitchen with dozens of Numi teas, thinking you'll make one, two, maybe three tea flavors at the most. And then you taste tea after tea, each remarkable, each stunningly original, and you realize that you want to make a gelato out of almost every tea.

Same went with Tcho chocolate; to avoid the cloying heaviness that can weigh down some chocolate gelato, Naia gets pure chocolate liquor, without cocoa butter, for use in its version. Making gelato with high-proof alcohol is a dicey undertaking, since it resists freezing, but since their success with St. George's single-malt whiskey, they're now working on a similar gelato made with the company's popular Absinthe Verte.

Plans for other partnerships are in the works (Morris is already working with chocolate star Michael Ricchiuti on a few possibilities), and the new local flavors should be available in Naia's shops in early February. But those who can't wait can attend Naia's upcoming Pre-Release Gelato Tasting Benefit on Feb. 4, held from 6-9pm at the Berkeley store at 2106 Shattuck Ave. (The $5 fee goes to Doctors Without Borders.)

There will more than 20 brand-new flavors available featuring ingredients from TCHO Chocolate (TCHO Nutty, TCHO Chocolatey), Numi Tea (Earl Grey, Green Tea, Jasmine, Golden Chai, Rooibos), Blue Bottle Coffee (Bella Donovan, Hayes Valley Espresso, Sidamo), St George Spirits (absinthe, eau de vie) and Recchiuti Chocolate.

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