Walking the Fancy Food Show
The 55th Summer Fancy Food Show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New City ended on Tuesday. I spent two days walking the aisles, sampling judiciously and trying to get a handle on upcoming food trends. This is a big show — with more than 24,000 attendees and 2,300 exhibitors from 70 countries.
One day I walked the show with friends from a national magazine who were looking for food gift ideas for their holiday issue. The second day I walked with a friend from a leading foodservice magazine. It’s so much more interesting to traverse the vast halls with a companion and to see the show through another perspective.
For my friends looking for holiday gift ideas, presentation is key, so those purveyors with attractive packaging were more likely to merit attention. But once we stopped at a booth, taste was the ultimate qualifier. The editors also filtered for their readership, taking into account price points and likely appeal.
From my friend the foodservice editor, I learned that this show seemed much busier than the annual restaurant trade show in Chicago. We surmised that, if people are eating at home more to save money, specialty foods are an affordable — and welcome — indulgence. As we walked, she pointed out some of the trends from foodservice reflected at the show, such as peri-peri sauces featuring the African peri-peri pepper as the signature ingredient, and the popularity of Korean food, including kimchi.
In truth, this is a hard show to distill into trends since there are so many exhibitors selling similar wares — olive oils, vinegars, spice rubs, gourmet popcorn, confections, varietal chocolates, cheeses, various kinds of salt and spices, prepared sauces, pretzels, granola, cookies and many more. It’s hard to ferret out what’s truly different. Even the new manufacturers, grouped together for their debut, appeared to be selling more of the same and I wondered how they planned to differentiate themselves in an already-crowded and competitive market.
Carefully sourcing unusual ingredients from out-of-the-way locations is one way to stand out from the crowd. There seemed to be a fair number of products using hibiscus for its antioxidant properties and agave nectar as a sweetener for its low-glycemic index. Food produced in more exotic locations — Belize, Mauritius — have more cachet than those from the usual food exporting countries.
Here are a few foods that caught my fancy:
- The most novel and truly new product was black garlic. The cloves turn soft and ebony-black through fermentation and they take on a molasses-like sweetness. It is odorless. The company claims the garlic is nearly twice as rich in antioxidants as raw garlic. The garlic comes from Korea and is processed in California.
- Japanese citrus juices from Yakami Orchard are being imported to the States by Wa Imports. Bottled yuzu juice bursts in the mouth with vibrantly fresh and zesty citrus flavors. The company also imports sudachi and kabosa juices. Their intense citrus notes can make cocktails or cooking sparkle.
- Lucini extra virgin olive oil in a three-liter box stays fresh for up to 12 months after opening. The box contains the equivalent of six 17-ounce bottles, making it less expensive than buying by the bottle and more environmentally friendly.
- Siggi’s Icelandic style skyr is a yogurt made in New York following an Icelandic recipe of more than a thousand years. Although produced from skim milk, it is thick and creamy and has a rich mouthfeel. The skyr comes in six flavors; plain would be delicious with some fresh herbs and garlic to make a healthy spread.
- Fish fumet from Meilleures Marques, a company in Quebec, is condensed into a concentrated liquid stock in convenient 170-gram packets.
- The highly entertaining Magic Pop uses an innovative machine. Grains are poured into an opening at the top and the machine blasts out fresh-popped multigrain snack crackers (fat-free and sugar-free, 15 calories) with a huge POP!
Food satisfies our need for nourishment — we eat to live. But food is so much more. Food is a reward. It’s a source of entertainment and exploration. It bestows status. It has the power to elicit curiosity and excitement, to succor with flavors and textures that give us comfort and a feeling of well-being. The Fancy Food Show fulfills many of these peripheral needs — it gratifies us when we live to eat.
