New food sensation awaits discovery at trade show
By Elizabeth Johnson
Westchester (N.Y.) Journal News
The best part about going to the Fancy Food Show — the annual display by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade held recently in Manhattan — is discovering a star among ho-hum exhibitors of the foods trying to find a place on your grocery shelf.
Sure, everyone needs a gimmick. But the reason to walk through miles of booths is not to see the man in the fig-leaf thong offering samples of muffins or the woman wearing angel wings and a halo touting her heavenly cookies.
It's much more rewarding to find the products whose manufacturers are actually thinking about what consumers might like to taste.
With just the right amount of zing, Mama Zuma's Revenge Green Chile Enchilada potato chips from Route 11 (www.rt11.com) are one example. So are the salsas from Xochil (www.salsaxochitl.com), which, despite its hard-to-pronounce name (SO-cheel), makes an easy-to-like dip with jalape–os, tomatillos and cilantro called Asada Verde. And
the mango sorbet made by Creme Cremaillere is simply astonishing. Eating a bite is like holding a mango on a Popsicle stick and biting the soft flesh around the flat seed.
As good as these products are — and they are outstanding — they are still potato chips, salsa and ice cream. Worthy, but nothing new.
It's difficult to spot the new products among a sea of samples. It's almost like walking through a museum and getting dizzy from all the art, except here, all the senses are involved. Smell the aroma of waffles cooking on the iron. Feel exhibitors thrust packets of chocolate-covered pretzels into your hand. Listen to the bacon sizzling on a grill. See the flashing neon lights. And of course, taste. Taste strong-smelling cheese, silky oil and dips made of artichokes, salmon mousse, and any spice mix you can throw in with cream cheese and spread on a cracker. Wash it down with water, juice, coffee, tea or soda.
There are lots of companies offering flavored carbonated beverages, almost all of which said they are the first in their category. (Doesn't anybody remember Clearly Canadian? Or at least Boylan's?)
Tommy's Naked Soda may be the best-tasting. All its flavors — Bubbling Black Raspberry, Clearly Cream, Righteous Root Beer, Optimal Orange and Luscious Lemon Lime — are preservative-free and clear. They're sweet but not syrupy.
GUS, which stands for Grown Up Soda, is not sweet at all — but that seems to be the point. Flavors like Dry Meyer Lemon and Star Ruby Grapefruit would appeal to those who like unsweetened ice tea or a wedge of lemon in their water.
The Switch, a company that doesn't want to be associated with soda, calls its flavors — watermelon strawberry and orange tangerine, for example — "carbonaturals." It's tasty and refreshing, but the juice — like all sweet drinks — sticks in the back of the throat a bit.
There are green-tea sodas such as Steap, which adds flavors such as root beer or raspberry to its Ceylon green tea and carbonates it; there are sodas without sugar or corn syrup — such as Fizzy Lizzy Sparkling Juice, which boasts juice and seltzer as its only ingredients.
But with all of these great tasting, inventive beverages, condiments, sweets and snacks, there is one product that makes the biggest impression — Peanut Better (www.peanutbetter.com). This product, flavored peanut butters such as Rosemary Garlic, Thai Ginger, Onion Parsley and Spicy Southwestern (you'll run for a glass of water) gets a lot of points for creativity. It comes in sweet flavors, too — but that's been done. The company says it doesn't use hydrogenated fats, emulsifiers or anything artificial, and it's certified organic, kosher and pareve.
Impressive credentials.
But does any of that matter unless it tastes good?
Luckily, it does. And there's no ho-hum at all.
