Surprising New Trends at the Winter Fancy Food Show

As the escalator slowly brought me down into the gluttonous mayhem that it was the Fancy Food Show, I geared up to eat chocolate, a lot of chocolate. During the summer Fancy Food Show in New York in May, I sampled close to a hundred different types of chocolates, filled with bacon, pop rocks, and exotic cayenne peppers. It was overwhelming, yet absolutely wonderful to simply suspend all care of calories and waistline and just give in to the orgy of tasting.

Spending a little QT with one of my favorite foodie friends, Jane Maynard.

I emailed my friend Jane, author of the gorgeous blog This Week for Dinner, months before the show, promising a mountain of chocolate and recipe inspiration for our blogs if she came with me.  Didn't you hear that you gain less weight if you're eating in good company?

I loved these Comptoir du Cacao pralines at the last show too.  Grab them at Zabars!

Although Jane and I did consume Olympic, Michael Phelps-worthy, waistline-straining quantities of chocolate, including the full range of the Guittard line and these delicious pralines from Comptoir du Cacao, chocolate was not the star of the show this time.

And so what were these surprising, non-chocolate trends?

1. Caramels. I know that the whole salty caramel concept already seems way overdone, but caramels were the unquestioned stars of the Fancy Food Show. Exhibitors went well beyond dusting chewy caramel squares with a few grains of sea salt. There were goat milk caramels, caramels coupled with 15-year old Bourbons, caramels topped with ancho chili powder, caramels stuffed with smoked peanuts and bits of bacon, chocolate caramel fudge sauces, soft caramels infused with the taste of local honey, and confiture de lait, a decadent French take on Dulce de Leche. The versatility of caramel was unbelievable.
2. Cured Meats. Even though Marc Bittman makes a compelling argument to cut back on meat consumption, the food world's love of meat does not seem to be decreasing. Every few booths, there would be a cluster of people, talking excitedly, and if you elbowed your way into their circle, you would inevitably find a pig's leg. Prosciutto and other cured meats were everywhere at the show, and the buzz around those products was electric. Evidence that 2011 is sure to be the year of charcuterie can also be seen by Michael Ruhlman's new book and a growing blogger movement called #Charcutepalooza on Twitter featuring a different cured meat each month this year.
3. Tea. The hottest booth at the Fancy Food Show was, without question, the Republic of Tea booth. It definitely had something to do with the free tea brewing mugs they were giving out, but there was more to the excitement around tea than a freebie. Twinings also had a big booth and a lot of people interested in hearing about their new vanilla Chai and red velvet flavors. As far as I was concerned, the most exciting new tea product was the cacao tea by a new company called Tisano. More on that below.

With so much food offered to you, it's hard to keep your head, but when you walk away, you know that only the most unique products stay top of mind. Here were my favorite products of the show:

• Droga Confections - Michelle Crochet used to be a buyer for Williams Sonoma. Now she is a caramel magician. Working out of a shared kitchen in San Francisco, she crafts soft honey caramels and rocky road candies. All of her confections are made out of natural ingredients, and you can really taste the difference in the marshmallow, peanuts, and most of all in the caramel. Each bite of her dark chocolate covered honey caramels is a revelation of flavor layers: first the sharp yet smooth dark chocolate, a little crunch of sea salt, and then you settle into the creamy and unusual sweetness of a honey caramel. It's as though you are communing with all the carefully selected ingredients that go into her candies. Michelle calls her goodies droga because of their addictive qualities. She's not kidding. I have one caramel left from the sample she gave me and I'm guarding it with my life. Some of her products are available in San Francisco stores and on Foodzie.

• Taste #5 Umami Paste - The Umami Effect is a fancy foodie concept, an elusive fifth taste to complement sweet, salty, bitter, and sour that can most easily be described as savoriness. It sounds fancy, something you would only experience at a 5-star restaurant, but you can experience Umami when biting into a warm McDonald's Quarter Pounder. Laura Santtini, author of the new cookbook Easy Tasty Italian, decided to bottle umami into a tube to make it something available to home cooks. She promises that a teaspoon of the stuff will turn the blandest chicken breast into something truly exciting. I haven't played with it yet to test its power, but a taste of the paste itself did fill my mouth with that yum feeling of deep food satisfaction. I can't wait to get my hands on a tube to put it through its paces. I love the concept. 

• CC Made Caramel Sauces - Cassandra Chen and Emily Hou are cousins who are really taking caramel to the highest quality level. I'm waiting impatiently to wow dinner guests with very grown up sundaes when their line of caramel sauces (sea salt, citrus, and chocolate) become available in the next few weeks. They were out of this world on their own and with the suggested toppings of smoked sea salt, grated citrus, and cayenne pepper. For now, you can buy their elegant caramel popcorn and semi-hard mini caramels on their website in exciting flavors like bitter sea salt and pistachio.

• Chocolate Tea from Tisano - When I was handed a cup of chocolate tea. I expected a weak brew with a faint taste of chocolate or a highly chemical flavor but I was blow away by the intense and well-rounded chocolate flavor of the tea. The tea is brewed from the fibrous shell of organic cacao beans, a bi-product of cacao production. Chocolate Tea from Tisano has no calories or fat and is filled with anti-oxidants. Tisano sources their cacao directly from Venezuelan farmers. It's almost too good to be true, except it's for real. You can purchase a can directly from Tisano, some of the bigger tea companies were also sampling chocolate tea, but none of them tasted anything like this. 

• Herbal Water - The lovely people at the Herbal Water booth told me that some restaurants charge up to $9 for a bottle of sparkling Herbal Water. I think that if I saw it on the menu, I might even pay that much. These light and refreshing blends of herbs (Ginger Lemon Peel, Lemongrass Mint Vanilla, and Cinnamon Orange Peel) that are infused in the water are really something special, without any chemical aftertaste or cloying sweetness that you get in many flavored waters.You can find Herbal Water at Whole Foods.

• Coppa from Olli Salumeria Americana - I spent a few delicious minutes with the boys from Olli Salumeria who just kept on carving from their beautiful pig haunch, explaining the different cuts of charcuterie they brought with them. My favorite by far was coppa, made from the neck of the pig, a decadently rich cold cut, silky like foie gras and toro. Pounce on it if you see it on a menu or in a fancy food shop meat case. Olli Meats are beginning to be sold in more places nationwide. I just spotted them at Fox and Obel in Chicago.

The location of the show (summer on the East Coast and winter in San Francisco) must affect the types of products exhibited somewhat, I do think that the excitement around the hot trends of the Fancy Food Show will translate to what we'll be eating off of dessert menus and supermarket shelves this year.