WINTER FANCY FOOD SHOW, SAN FRANCISCO

The Winter Fancy Food Show came to San Francisco January 22 - 24. I attend this show every year to discover new food trends, meet representatives from food companies, and to see favorite vendors.

Fancy Food is a show for the food trade. Specialty food companies come to introduce new products and to widen their customer base of food stores, caterers, food distributors and restaurants. I go representing the press and always come away with a feeling for what foods are going to be popular in the next year and beyond, which ones endure from year to year, and which ones are no longer must have items.

This year, my friend Janet joined me for our day of food tasting and discovery.

I always start in the Cheese section, which goes on for row after row in the Moscone Center.  At last year's show I discovered many flavored cheese, particularly flavored cheddars. This year, we saw many softer flavored cheeses. There were many wonderful lavender and truffle-flavored cheeses.

 

The colorful, flavored French Macarons continue to be a favorite sweet. Both Janet and I indulged.

Hummus, in a wide variety of flavors, continues to be a popular dip/spread. Baba Hummus from San Luis Obispo was a newcomer to the show, introducing its handmade organic hummus. Right now, their hummus is in several California grocery stores and sold at many Central California Farmer's Markets.  Hopefully, since the show, it will be showing up in other parts of the country.

We tasted lots of Nut Butters made with a variety of nuts and in a variety of flavors. 

The most interesting nut butter that I sampled was the Peanut Butter & Co.'s Mighty Nut Powdered Peanut Butter.  The peanut butter can be reconstituted as a spread by mixing 1 tablespoon of water into 2 tablespoons of powered peanut butter.  It worked perfectly and tasted great.  I've also tried it simply sprinkled on my cereal or yogurt for an added protein and taste boost.  Many Bay Area grocery stores already carry this product and I highly recommend it both for at home and perhaps for your next camping trip.  

 

Smoked Salmon remains a popular fancy food and we indulged ourselves at the show.

As always, there are a lot of tea companies at the show.  A trend towards flavored teas continues.  And, curiously, many longtime tea companies, such as Harney & Sons, have added bottled juice, tea,  and energy drinks to their repertoire. 

Pique, a San Francisco company, introduced its individual packet of tea crystals, packaged much like Starbuck's Via. Their teas are already in many Bay Area markets and even at Sports Basement. Just add hot or cold water to a packet of crystals, and you have a high quality tea to drink.

To my delight, Snoqualmie Ice Cream, from the state of Washington, was at the show to introduce its new Organic ice creams.  I discovered their French Lavender ice cream almost 5 years ago in some local supermarkets. But, these markets no longer carry it and I've been longing for it.  Now, they have two versions of their Lavender flavor. Hopefully, Snoqualmie has found some new Bay Area markets for its superior ice creams. Believe me, their lavender is THE BEST!!!  I know it was popular at the show because they had run out of samples of it by the time Janet and I found their booth.

 

Last year I discovered Traina's tasty sun-dried tomato ketchup.  This year, they've spiced up their offerings to keep up with the enduring Sriracha trend with a new Sriracha version.  

The array of confections at Fancy Food can be overwhelming.  We saw several Marshmallow vendors.  Could gourmet marshmallows be the "it" sweet for the coming year?

At this year's Winter Fancy Food Show, vendors were allowed to hand out packaged samples of their foods, rather than simply serving samples at their booths.  I was delighted to be able to take samples with me to taste and evaluate later.  Of course, most vendors also served generous tastes of their products at their booths as well. The above are some of the samples that I picked up.  

And, one last note, my in-house taster of all things sweet, was happy to do his analysis of Jelly Belly's Kid Mix Jelly Beans. 

Winter Fancy Food Show: What's New? What are the trends for 2016?

I spent yesterday at the Winter Fancy Foods show in San Francisco. Every year, I attend at least one day of this 3-day exposition.

I attend mainly to see what trends there are for the coming year. To determine what's trending, I spend the entire day tasting cheeses, sweets, crackers, sauces, teas, and more.

From what I observed, kale is on its way out and beets are the new super-vegetable. I tasted packaged cooked beets in all shapes and cuts, beet crackers, beet chips, and beet juice.

I even picked up recipes for beet smoothies and beet cocktails.

The main cheese trend that I saw was flavored cheeses, particularly flavored cheddars. My favorite was Rogue Creamery's La-Di-Da Lavender cheddar.  Jarlsberg is even making a line of crackers with its cheese.  They are quite tasty.

Packaged Tuna that is low in mercury showed up at the booths of several vendors. As one who would eat a tuna salad sandwich every day of the week, given the choice, I sampled several tuna salads at the show.  I am very impressed with Safe Catch in Marin County who tests every one of its fishes to assure that its Skipjack and Albacore tuna is even more mercury free than the levels required by the FDA.

The newest of the ancient grains, Freekeh is competing with Quinoa as the go-to supergrain. Could this be because many people don't know how to pronounce Quinoa?

One Quinoa vendor has named its product with the grain's phonetic pronunciation. While Freekeh has its intrigue and undisputed nutritional benefits, I still prefer quinoa or farro as my supergrains of choice.

Hemp turned up in drinks and as a grain to add to salads, soups and other dishes.

Coconut Sugar and Oil turned up in numerous foods as a more healthful alternative to cane sugar.  Several popcorn and snack vendors are using coconut oil in their products.

As for tea, each year brings more and more new flavors as well as the old standards like Earl Grey and English Breakfast.  The Japanese powdered tea, Matcha is one of my favorites (If you've ever eaten Green Tea Ice Cream, its color and flavor is that of Matcha).  This year, several vendors were offering Matchas in single-serving packets.

Teas that claim to "cleanse" or "reduce weight" have been around for awhile.  This year at Fancy Foods, it seems that the big companies are now offering supplemented teas.

And, to go with tea, cheese, dips, or just to eat by themselves the variety of crackers, biscuits, and cookies continues to be infinite.

I particularly enjoyed tasting Effie's Homemade Oatcakes and Ryecakes and would have either of them with a cup of tea or a cocktail.

Ice cream and gelato remains ever-popular.  For Fancy Foods, Choctál had tastings of 4 single-origin Vanilla ice creams and 4 single-origin Chocolate ice creams.  For each of the two tastings, they had a special plate and tasting notes.  My favorite Vanilla was the Indonesian Vanilla and my favorite Chocolate the mocha-y Dominican Chocolate.

I didn't see as many barbecue sauce vendors at the show as I have in past years, but did see more spice vendors.  Perhaps spice rubs will be replacing the sweet sauces as a flavoring for meats, poultry, and fish as well as adding salt-free seasonings to vegetables and grain dishes.

Organic and gluten-free products are still numerous.

Even Jelly Belly has introduced jelly beans and other confections made with organic fruits.

Attending the Winter Fancy Food Show is always an interesting and fun day.  The Winter show is usually in San Francisco and the summer version is in New York City.

Winter Fancy Food Show

 I'm just back from my first day of the Winter Fancy Food show that goes on for three days this week in San Francisco at Moscone Center.

My main goals in attending the shore are to get a sense of food trends and to find products that are sold locally or that I can request that my local Whole Foods or other stores carry.

My general observations are that GMO FREE has surpassed GLUTEN FREE as the current "desirable" feature of many foods. Of course, many vendors proudly display signs that their food is both.

Lots of snack foods are featured this year, mostly chips of all sorts and popcorns, both sweet and savory.

As always, there are many more cheeses from around the world than any human could possibly taste in a month, much less three days.

What several cheese makers are now doing are expanding their product lines with yogurts and ice creams.  

My favorite yogurt from a cheese maker was Tillamook's, coffee yogurt. I'm a big fan of coffee yogurt and have a very hard time finding any brand of this flavor. This one is delicious. Tillamook yogurts are available at Safeway.

Roth Cheeeses was making Reuben sandwiches with their Raclette cheese…what a clever and DELCIOUS idea!

Continuing on the subject of cheeses, I saw many cheeses with spices and added flavors in them. One vendor told me that they take their basic cheese and, with seasonings, wind up with several different products, for many more tastes.

Delallo Italian Foods never disappoints with it array of antipasta, all available for tasting.

I tasted bottled drinks of all sorts. Some have "healthy" additives, others just different flavors. 

Republic of Tea is even introducing a line of High Caffeine Teas!!!

A wine that intrigued me is Stack Wines. I didn't taste the wine, but was Wowed by the packaging: 4 single-serviing plastic cups of wine stacked on top of one another. One Stack is a bottle of wine in a break-proof package, great for taking to a picnic or other event.

I think the entire world is hummuses out. I saw very few hummus companies. While I do enjoy hummus, it's time to move on to some other dip.

But, I did discover several granolas and really liked Gypsy Crunch's granolas, which just so happen to be Gluten and GMO free.

A new ice cream that I'm going to be looking for in stores is Agave Dream, which is sweetened with agave syrup instead of sugar. Agave syrup has a lower glycemic index that sugar so is a better alternative for those wishing to consume less sugar.  In contrast to sugar substitutes, agave has all the desirable sweetness qualities as sugar. I use agave often instead of sugar.

There were many chocolate vendors displaying very very good chocolates from milk chocolate to wonderful dark chocolates.

Of course, Jelly Belly never fails to have a large exhibit and always a new flavor or two to introduce. It is their Draft Beer Jelly Belly that is one of the new flavors of the year…right in time for Super Bowl snacking.

And, the Jelly Belly exhibit would not be complete without a Jelly Belly work of art.