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Fancy Food Show 2010

This past weekend we were at the Fancy Food show cruising our way through myriads of vendor booths and a sea of people. What struck us as soon as we passed through a few booths was how the vendors looked at your badge and decided in a split of a second whether to give you 1 second or 30 seconds of their time. Our badge said CAT- short for catering and it confused the heck out of most vendors.

The food show was in both halls of the Moscone center, North and South. One focused on the big players like Ghiradelli, Republic of Tea and Walkers. On the other side were more mom and pop type businesses and mid level food companies. We enjoyed the latter more. Some of the eye catching ones was coffee in a pill; the lady who ran the booth was passionate about what she soldJ. We have some samples of it, which we should try one of these days.  We like to hold a warm cup and sip our coffee and tea for now while savoring the aromas. Talking of teas, a whole post is coming soon. The recurring flavor was ginger tea. Our favorites were Numi and teatulia.

Some of the displays were fancy like one below with the colorful puppets from Indonesia, and there was a real Scot in his traditional kilt giving out samples of fine scotch.

Chocolates – there was every flavor imaginable, bacon, ginger, chilli, citrus and even lavender blueberry dark chocolate by Dagoba- their catch phrase is , “You can deprive the body, but the soul needs chocolate” Ah, that will be our excuse from now on. Another chocolate company was Rogue Confectioners; they had handmade Belgian chocolates with vintage inspired patterns on them. We have not tasted them yet, as we have to take pictures first.

Some of the other catchy companies were a booth selling fartless bean soup kits, a Cajun pepper sauce called Slap ya mamma by Walker and Sons, an anti hangover drink that is effective in 30-45 minutes from France, a Korean sweet and spicy sauce in a tube..The list is endless. It seemed as though every vendor had a gimmick up his sleeve that made them look unique and it felt like they were all in a food pagent, if you can call it that.

The mantra this year was this is good for you, it is gluten free, there are preservatives etc. A whole lot of spice and spice packaging companies were present. We particularly enjoyed chilies shaped like stars and saffron strand like chilies. Talking of spices, reminds us of the various salts we had. One company that stuck out was secret stash seas salts. Their garam masala sea salt was out of the world. Marinate your chicken or paneer in it and grill for a flavorful grilled chicken. What about pineapple cumin salt, dang we want those babies now J

Honest Teas, Kombucha seemed like we were drinking vinegar, but for sure it is going to be the rage @ Natural food stores. Hotlips Soda on the other hand was refreshing. It is slightly carbonated, not very sweet and has flavors like raspberry and apple. They are made the traditional way, cooked, bottled and pasteurized. Our immediate reaction when one take’s a sip is that it is not too sweet; they seem to add just the right amount of cane sugar and more fruits.

When we were finished, we enjoyed being in food coma, our feet hurt and shoulders sore with carrying bag load of samples. Will we do this again next year, no question about it. Just so know, we were not “bribed” to mention about any of these companies. We write about what we savored and the few samples we picked up. There were too many booths to cover each and every one of them, but there is always next year.

Surprise was meeting Tyler Florence who was promoting his products.