A walk through the Summer 2015 Fancy Food Show makes one thing very clear – entrepreneurship, innovation and big, bold flavors are alive and well in the food industry!
Walking the Exhibit Hall, we started with the confections, just because we could. There were many delicacies to appeal to the most discriminating sweet tooth (we know, we sampled a LOT!), with so many stand-outs in this category: John Kelly Chocolates, Brownies to GoGo, Fancypants Baking Co., E&C Snacks, Soulfully Sweet’s gluten-free cookies, and too many others to mention. While any right-thinking foodie would agree that it’s hard to top a lovely piece of chocolate, we found a few chocolate companies offering such clever flavors – lemon, orange, and other fruits mixed in to blend sweet and tart on the palate in bursts of bright, surprising flavor – delicious! A real stand-out in this category in our opinion was Dagoba Organic Chocolate.
Big new flavors “sauced” things up with marinades, sauces and specialty foods that harkened back to homemade flavors of the past (of particular note, Jar Goods pasta sauce and Vermont Signature Sauces) and flavors of home – wherever home might be, including wonderful offerings from Italy – of course! – and Thai, France, and so many tastes from our own country’s regions. Big, bold flavors carried the day, with peppers clearly being one of the hottest trends spotted. (peppers, hot trend…sorry, just couldn’t resist that).
One of the most interesting companies we met with by far is Suji’s Korean Cuisine. Entrepreneur and Chief Inspirational Officer Suji Park is introducing an exciting line of products that are high-quality and packed with wonderful flavors that reflect the true wonder of this country’s culinary heritage. None of us wanted to leave the sample area of this booth!
So many booths, so many samples (and so little time). We’ll be blogging again with more exciting companies and trend-spotting from New York’s festival of foodies!
Mona, Judy and Julia