Olive oil from Lucca, Italy. We walked into a shop and asked the owner for her favorite -- she steered us well! Alas, the oil is not exported, so we'll have to go back someday.

Pavlova Eggs from Australia so I could make Pavlova at home, Tea from Paris, and Pistachio liqueur from Curacao. Edibles are my favorite souvenirs!

Some olive oil from the Greek Islands...or maybe an assortment of airport-bottle-sized single malt scotches from an assortment of regions in Scotland.

Tin upon tin of foie gras pate from France when there was the ridiculous foie gras ban in Chicago. Or the unexported white Burgundy from a small vineyard on that same trip.

Fleur de sel aux epices grillees from G. Detout in Paris on our honeymoon in September 2007. Sea salt with toasted spices. We're judiciously ekeing our way through and we gave some in canning jars as Christmas presents that year.

Coffee purchased directly from a cooperative in Honduras

I brought back a huge pile of vanilla beans from my trip to Martinique. It made several wonderful batches of extract and lots of delicious baked goods!

Sorrento Lemon infused olive oil from our honeymoon in Sorrento, Italy. I use that stuff so sparingly to conserve it!

Kalamata olive oil from Greece. I swear, there's no better oil to dip your bread in (or fry up some french fries!). Too earthy/fruity to use on salad for my tastes but otherwise amazing!

A huge wheel of Pecorino di Pienza, bought right in Pienza, Italy. Best of all, it was dirt cheap straight from the source. I'm sure I broke some travel rules bringing this back with me, but my dad (and I) enjoyed it for months after. With sliced pears--heaven.

@yourlittlevoice

yea that's super against the rules. Meats and cheeses especially. Be glad they didn't search your bag. We saw people in customs getting pulled off into private rooms for stuff like that. It's a concern about bringing over bacteria/ diseases not native to us.

@ jmorri26 haha yup! it was vacuum-sealed though, which i was told made it, uh, less bad. i haven't made a habit of it though :)

Ahhh... Boxes of local wines -- from Italy, France, Germany.

Groceries from Eataly in Torino (for another 9 weeks, we still live in Geneva, and can do that). The best dried pasta, artisanal Italian cheeses, amazing coffee, steaks, olive oil. The list goes on.

Belgian chocolates. My husband loves Manons most; all three varieties, dark, milk and white chocolate with a walnut on top. One time on a trip back from Africa, he made sure to have a 2 hour lay over in Brussels, grabbed a taxi to his favourite shop, and came back loaded down with 10 kilos of chocolates. And beers; wonderful, amazing Belgian beers.

I think everywhere we have ever gone in Europe, we have come home loaded down with local specialities.

The usual:

Macarons from Bouchon in New York
Lemonchello from Italy
Fudge and Vegemite from Australia
Tea from England

Spices from Peru & Stroopwofels from The Netherlands !!

I was actually just making a salt-buying plan last night for an upcoming trip to France!

My past travel purchases have been decidedly more lowbrow, centering on bizarrely-flavored crisps and oddly-named candy.

Herb de provence from Paris
Sumac and dried mint from Istanbul,
and countless spices from Bombay.

Artisan cheese and olive oil from Crete.

Pure. Heaven.

thai sweet chili crisps by Walker's from the UK- i crave those and buy them by the bagful when there. utterly delicious w a glass or prosecco or a dark, amber Belgian beer. x shayma

Hands down, limoncello from Italy. Can't get enough of that deliciousness :)

Sake brewed only in Takayama, Gifu, Japan... delicious!

Lemon marmalade from Fortnum and Mason. My first bite of this jam was a total revelation. So lemony, so sweet. I can't find it in any markets around me...only the usual orange and triple fruit varieties. Given our country's love of lemonade and lemon meringue pies, it's a bit surprising that this hasn't caught on.

Amazing wine from our trip to Italy, European Nutella, assorted chocolates, and of course KinderEggs!

Pounds and pounds of dried chanterelles and cepes from Paris. As many tins as we could carry of foie gras from the same. I also buy teas, salts, and spices everywhere we travel. Childhood favorites from the UK (mostly junky food like crisps and candies).

But my favorite and now a must-have has been dried scallops (for snacking) from Japan. They sell them at Narita International and in my family they work like currency. They are so deeply and satisfyingly savory and unlike the dried scallops (used for soup) sold anywhere else, they're fantastically meaty. They don't keep much over 6 months so I try to ration them out but not let any go to waste. Soooo good!

Actually, most cheeses are ok (pecorino included), according to this: https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/82/~/travelers-bringing-food-into-the-u.s.-for-personal-use

We recently brought back some really unusual cheese from Spain....though my favorite travel edible would have to be the limoncello from Italy (to echo quite a few others!).

A pound of Belgian chocolates from a famous chocolatier that my husband brought home from Brussels that were purchased 20 hours before - they told him that they are fresh and go bad quickly, so I was happy to eat the whole box in a couple of days. Totally in the name of food preservation, of course!

Corn cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar. My boyf and I still talk about them a year later. Going this month to get more!

My mum works for an airline and usually brings me back a little something related to my kitchen... Some of the highlights are the dried herbs and O&Co. Truffle salt and flavoured oils from Provence, spices from Thailand and Dubai, cream limoncello from Tuscany and coffee candies from Indonesia, as well as chocolate and macarons from Ladurée which weren't as good as I had hoped (but the packaging is beautiful).

She also comes back bursting with descriptions of dishes that she's tried and wants to recreate (Tuscan beans with sage has stayed in the rotation!), and finds great deals on kitchen equipment – Global knives in Japan cost far less than they do in Australia!

Customs is STRICT in Australia so I was limited in food related items I could bring without them being confiscated (nothing with eggs, meat, dairy etc..) I ended up with a few small boxes of cereal (the tiny, 1 serve boxes) from France that I hadn't had a chance to eat yet, some hagelslag from Holland (also in a convenient travel pack) and some tea from Scotland. How I wish I could have brought back some macarons from Laduree!

It's not quite as fancy as the international treasures some folks are mentioning, but when my partner and I took a tiny vacation up to Calistoga, CA from San Francisco over New Year's, we stopped in an olive oil shop and bought a bottle of fragrant and delicious locally made walnut oil. Every time I pull it out to use, I think of that wonderful weekend.

Balsamic vinegar from Florence (not necessarily THE place for it). Sadly, the bottle has just gone dry.

A small 5 bottle pack of flavoured olive oils from Pisa, and orange and lavender honey from Santorini.

Balsamic vinegar from Modena. A bottle each of the 12 and 25 year aged - liquid gold! If anyone is looking to do a tour of a traditional balsamic vinegar operation, ie. in a private home, I highly recommend Acetaia di Giorgio (just Google it).

Chocolate hagel from the Netherlands (for toast), wagashi from Japan (eaten on the road there), Cadbury's drinking chocolate from England (simple and good), marzipan from Germany.

I'v brought and recieved plenty of edible souvenirs over the years, but my favourites have been Macarons from Ladurée in Paris, champagne from Champagne, cava from Barcelona, coca tea from Peru, chilli powder from Calcutta. But the best edible souvenir by far I've ever recieved was a sweet lemon, picked straight from a lemon tree in Greece. Citrus fruit has never tasted so good!