When I go into a gourmet food shop I get the jitters.

Alas, my culinary expertise is limited to simple salads, pasta and crackers and cheese when I’m really down-and-out. Naturally, high-end olive oils and other such foodie stuff scare the jeepers outta me.

So after missing the media night launching the new Shops of Summerhill, otherwise known as the five thieves, I feel the need to enlist some help in showing me around the gourmet food shops on Yonge St. just south of the Summerhill subway station.

Salvation comes in the form of Toronto-based foodie extraordinaire, Mary Luz Mejia. A food writer and producer, Mary Luz currently pens a column for www.suite101.com and produces a new TV show, Fearless in the Kitchen, not to mention having a cornucopia of international food experience behind her.

Our inspiration for our foodie tour: the new Gathering Around the Grill by Ontario’s Andrea Witzel and Kris Schumacher, a lovely hardcover book based on the authors’ family barbecue recipes and entertaining ventures.

Mary Luz puts together a fine summer menu from the recipes in the book, starting with the Warm Shrimp Cocktail and progressing to the Lemony Chicken Burgers with a Roasted Red Pepper Sauce served with Zucchini Rolls and Grilled Fingerling Potatoes. To finish: Grilled Pineapple with Mango Gelato.
We meet one Saturday afternoon to get the skinny on the shops and also the key ingredients we’ll need for our meal.

For the zucchini rolls, which call for soft goat cheese — otherwise known as chevre — we pop into All the Best Fine Foods, in a temporary location until its new shop opens in 2010.

It used to be that you could only find French chevre, Mary Luz tells me, but now Ontario is producing some very good varieties. Mario Stojanac, Mary Luz’s husband and fellow foodie, has come along for the tour and both he and Mary Luz recommend buying Ontario cheese as it allows the cheese makers to continue doing what they do, they say.

We select a little log of chevre from Ontario for about $6.95. It’s not necessary to buy a whole wheel for this recipe, she says.

1101 Yonge St., 416-928-3330 www.allthebestfinefoods.com

We move next door to Harvest Wagon, also in a temporary location until its new digs are ready, in search of fingerling potatoes — that’s skinny taters for foodie idiots like me. Turns out there are all kinds, red, white and plum-hued ones for $2.99 a pound.

Make sure they’re firm with no puckering, Mary Luz instructs, and buy all three types for variety and a more colourful effect.

We take a gander at the pineapples for our dessert. It shouldn’t be too yellow, Mary Luz says, and the eyes should be firm, not squishy or brown. Mario says he likes buying his pineapples about a quarter yellow; that way he knows it’s not over or under ripe.

The green shoots at the head of the pineapple should be green and not at all mottled, Mary Luz tells me, and a little trick she and Mario learned is to pull out one of the shoots and smell it. Ideally it should smell like pineapple if it’s in good shape.

1103 Yonge St., 416-923-7542

Things get dicey for me in the gorgeous new Pisces Gourmet fish shop, and I scribble intently as Mary Luz and an associate chat about how to buy shrimp, this time for the shrimp cocktail.

Turns out, in Ontario, fresh shrimp is an impossibility, though the store does carry fresh British Columbia spot prawns when available, we’re told.

The options for our shrimp cocktail are therefore frozen crustaceans that have been defrosted and sitting in the case or direct from the freezer — but here Mary Luz cautions:

Since the jumbo shrimp for the cocktail are going to be grilled on the BBQ, we have to make sure we don’t buy the frozen shrimp that’s already been cooked as doing so twice will make them rubbery, you see.

If you’re not serving the shrimp until the next day, Mary Luz recommends buying frozen shrimp and draining the juices off as the shrimp defrosts and covering with saran wrap on a plate. Shrimp have enzymes, she says, that will “turn” if the shrimp sits in the juices. If shrimp smells like ammonia, it’s gone bad and you should chuck it.

1103 Yonge St., unit 1, 416-921-8888

To get the meat for our Lemony Chicken Burgers with Roasted Pepper Sauce we hit the new Olliffe, the swankiest looking meat shop I’ve ever seen.

We hang out at the back meat counter with employee Andy Decola, an artist who created the shop’s artwork.

Both Mary Luz and Mario recommend mixing half white and half dark meat for chicken burgers. White meat is drier, they say, while dark meat will make the burger juicier because it’s fattier, and a burger is nothing if it’s not juicy. That much I know.

Andy can grind the two types for us no problem. Season the chicken liberally, Mary Luz says, as the meat will taste bland without it.

Whenever possible, go for meat that’s hormone and steroid-free, Mario adds, as it is here. Vegetarian-fed meat is better than organic, in his foodie opinion.

1097 Yonge St., 416-928-0296

Before jaunting off I take a quick peep in Sweetgrass, just to stop and smell the beautiful long-stemmed roses. We agree that some of the shorter arrangements in square glass vessels would do better for a dinner party table. That way people can look over them and see each other while they nosh and gab.

1099 Yonge St., 416-926-9000 www.sweetgrassflowers.ca

There’s no time for a nosh and gab today, alas, as Mary Luz and Mario are off to a wedding. Stay tuned: making a meal worthy or a gourmand is definitely on the front burner.

For more information on Mary Luz Mejia, please visit www.maryluzmejia.com or call her at 416-992-2644.

For more information on Gathering Around the Grill visit www.gatheringaroundthegrill.com