(CNN) -- Some travelers obsess about hotel rooms and plane tickets, museums and monuments. For a special few, travel is about neither the journey nor the destination, but what you eat when you get there.

Food is an elusive travel pleasure -- not easy to bring home or even re-create. The foodie's greatest souvenir is craving.

Short of going to the source, there is a way to fill that longing -- on the Web. From gourmet vinegars that make respectable wines look cheap to gift baskets of bagels and even ice cream, you can find many culinary flagships these days posting their wares online.

Here are just a few of the virtual epicurean destinations, and -- should you want to pay respects in person -- their real-life locations.

http://www.cafedumonde.com/

Café Du Monde
813 Decatur St., New Orleans
(504) 581-2914

There are few cities better suited than New Orleans for throwing calorie and cholesterol cautions to the wind. And on that fine bayou breeze wafts the aroma of a perfectly fitting temptation: Café Du Monde beignets.

Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the menu of this French Market foodie mecca is gloriously simple: coffee and chicory (a coffee-like drink made from the roasted root of the chicory weed), white and chocolate milk, soft drinks, orange juice, and, of course, beignets -- square, donut-like treats that come three to an order.

If you can't make it to New Orleans, you can order some of the Café's delicacies online. The beignets won't arrive piping hot at your door, but if you aren't afraid of stoking up some hot oil, you can make them yourself with the beignet mix ($2.20 for 28 oz.) that Café Du Monde sells in the "Merchandise" section of its Web site.

Other goodies include its signature chicory and coffee, gift baskets, mugs and T-shirts (at least you'll look like you visited) -- even sugar and napkin dispensers ($4.95 and $10.50 respectively), if you want to re-create the Du Monde atmosphere at home.

http://www1.viaweb.com/dd/

http://www.balducci.com/

Dean and Deluca
560 Broadway, New York City
(212) 226-6800

Balducci's
424 Avenue Of The Americas, New York City
(212) 673-2600

New York City can drive a food-lover to distraction -- and bankruptcy. For the well-heeled, Dean and Deluca (in SoHo) and Balducci's (in Greenwich Village) are among the city's illustrious haute grocers.

Should you be a resident of a universe other than NYC, you can browse the well-stocked shelves online as well. Dean and Deluca divides its elegant Web site into more than 20 departments, from Caviar & Smoked Fish to Wine & Kitchenware.

At Balducci's site, you can dream up your shopping list while browsing a photo tour of the store. The Web site's somewhat buried merchandise section (Catalogo Per La Cucina) offers up everything from squid ink linguine ($3.50 for 8 oz.) to lemon oil ($7 for 1.5 oz.), and many other delicacies.

Lest you think $75 for two-thirds of an ounce of Italian black truffles outlandish, Dean and Deluca's Web site points out "that good taste (can) soften the brittle edges of modern life." What better reason do you need?

http://www.stew-leonards.com/

Stew Leonard's
100 Westport Ave., Norwalk, Connecticut
(203) 847-7213

Stew Leonard's is the kind of grocery store where KIDS want to go -- and if you aren't a kid, it's likely to make you one again. With animatronic, singing milk cartons and farm animals, a toy train circling on an overhead track, and even a petting zoo in the parking lot, Stew's is an oasis for the errand-laden.

The Leonard family got its start in food service in 1924, when Charles Leo Leonard delivered milk by horse and wagon. His son, Stew, built the business into a grocery store which moved to its flagship location in Norwalk in 1969. Today, you can still stand by windows and watch milk being processed in the store.

In that tradition, Stew Leonard's promises an Interactive Dairy Demo is coming soon to its Web site. Another store custom gone virtual is the famous shopping bag gallery -- photos that happy customers (holding Stew Leonard's bags) have sent in from their travels around the world.

For those who want to shop, the online catalog offers everything from handpainted pottery to a gift box of bagels for $24.95. A handy page also breaks down gift selections by price category.

But nothing beats going to the store itself. Besides the Norwalk location, you can get the Stew Leonard's experience at 99 Federal Road, Danbury, Connecticut (phone (203) 790-8030).

http://www.benjerry.com/

Ben and Jerry's
Route 100, Waterbury, Vermont
(802) 882-1260

Sure, you can pick up Ben and Jerry's at almost any convenience store, but only in Vermont can you make a pilgrimage to the place where the creamy confection is produced. Of course, the obvious draw of a Ben and Jerry's factory tour is free samples, but better still, you can learn some tricks of the trade -- like the cleverly low-tech method of shattering Heath bars for the Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. (A strong-armed worker dashes cases of unwrapped candy bars to the floor.)

The Ben and Jerry's Web site is chock full of all the trivia a dedicated fan could want -- lists of flavors and best-sellers, games and locations of scoop shops. Visitors can even pay their respects to dearly departed flavors like Reverse Chocolate Chunk Light and Maine Blueberry at the graveyard.

At the online Ben and Jerry's store, shoppers can pick up bovine-themed gifts such as T-shirts and mouse pads. The good stuff can be delivered to your door, too -- gift packs of six pints arrive packed in dry ice by overnight mail for $64.95, plenty of scoops to sate that ice cream craving.

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