Here's the exterior and entry of Toronto's Cheese Boutique, notably open 360 days each year - so as to be ideal for holiday party shopping. Copper and wood elements bring warm orange and yellow glows to some of the rooms, contrasting with the almost sterile white and silver tones of Dean & Deluca locations elsewhere.

While the cheese collection isn't mind-blowingly broad, there's plenty to choose from. A special cheese aging room is sealed off by a door with a sign warning those with sensitive noses to stay out. Inside, you'll find huge cheese wheels that have been shelved for years in preparation for everyone from the Four Seasons Hotel to Air Canada Centre and trendy local restaurants including Pizzeria Libretto. It's a sight to see.

Gourmet meats, olives, and quail eggs are found next to the refrigerated cheese section; common chorizos sit besides Berkshire Pork and black truffle "Truffle Hunter" sausages at $4 a pop.

The high walls of the pasta room are lined with bags of gourmet pasta, and constantly staffed by an employee who offers cheese and salami samples. Outside are French, Chinese, Indian, and Italian snacks, as well as loaves of bread, olive oils, and cookware.

Eclectic sauces and packages of gourmet food mixes are scattered throughout Cheese Boutique's rooms. Numerous hot sauces, including ones showing the degrees of pain using faces, are in one area; chocolatier Vosges' offerings include a Mo's Bacon Chocolate Pancake Mix, Caramel Toffee Chocolate Chunk Brownie Mix, and many bars of uniquely flavored chocolate.

Samples of Caykur's Rize, a strong Turkish tea, are served from a silver platter to shoppers every hour or so. As one person said to us upon receiving her glass cup with two sugar cubes and a metal spoon: "This is the way to shop!"

The dessert section includes a wall of gourmet packaged chocolates, almost all imported from European countries such as Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland, as well as fancy tarts, cakes, and cookies. Macarons, gold- and silver-covered chocolate dragees, full-sized desserts, and single-person portions are all on offer from a small but well-stocked counter.

Is Cheese Boutique the ultimate gourmet store? Though it makes an incredible first and second impression, packing so much into its walls that we couldn't help but be impressed, it's expensive - even Canadians think so. Noted Toronto food journalist Mary Luz Mejia has commented that another store, the grocery Fiesta Farms, "carr[ies] a lot of the same for a lot less," sometimes "a quarter of the price." So we'll check Fiesta Farms out, too, but we really liked what we saw at Cheese Boutique, and inevitably return for more goodies in the future.