“I’m So Fancy”: Summer Fancy Food Show 2014

Food lovers unite: nearly 25,000 attendees and exhibitors descended on the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York from June 29 to July 1 for the 59th Annual Summer Fancy Food Show.

This year’s SFFS was the largest since it was first presented in 1955; the sold-out exhibit halls were filled with 2,730 specialty food makers, importers, and entrepreneurs representing the latest new products and trends from across the U.S. and around the globe.

Over 1,500 exhibitors from the U.S. packed the aisles alongside pavilions representing 49 countries.

The private trade show welcomed top names in U.S. retailing and restaurants–including Whole Foods, Dean & DeLuca, Kroger, and Le Pain Quotidien–and buying delegations from Europe and countries as diverse as Uruguay, Paraguay, Albania, and China.

This year introduced the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Awards, which honored five pioneers in the Specialty Food Industry: Harold Anderson, founder of Haddon House Food Products; Max Reiss, founder of Reiss Finer Foods; Tony Matthews, president of Food From Britain, who helped build the presence of imported British foods in the U.S.; Russ Vernon, a pioneering specialty food retailer who opened the venerable West Point Market in Akron, Ohio; and Mario Foah, who helped launch the introduction of Italian food products in the U.S. and who was a founding member of today’s Specialty Food Association.

Some vendors seemed to construct fully-functioning “kitchens” to prep their samples.

Twinings Tea even set up a makeshift patio for momentary respite from the SFFS’s hubbub.

An entire pavilion was reserved for the American Cheese Society, so we splurged on fromage galore.

Vermont Farmstead Cheese Company shared a portfolio of nibbles; soft-ripened is my kind of cheese, so Angeline and Lillé Coulommiers were right up my alley.

Even Philly staple DiBruno Bros. was there! The unapologetically rich Délice de Bourgogne smeared atop a plump dried fig was heaven in a bite.

A representative from Boska Holland demonstrated how a cheese curler works. A stainless steel curling knife is attached to a pin in the center, which secures the cheese to the board. The paper-thin rosettes created intensify the cheese’s true flavor and serve as an eye-catching presentation.

Need a treat for your cheese plate? Japan’s Abukuma Foods uses every component of sweet peaches; particularly notable was the company’s patented process to enabling the pit to be consumed (yes, the olive-shaped, green bites above).

There was no shortage of chocolate at the convention.

Bars or truffles, logs or spreads, simple or exotic: you name it, you could probably find it here.

TCHO marries a Silicon Valley start-up mindset with San Francisco food culture by celebrating innovation, flavor, and quality in its products. We taste-tested “Galactic Gelato”, featuring dark chocolate and mint astronaut ice cream bits; “TCHunky TCHOtella” with milk chocolate, hazelnut butter, crunchy Piedmontese hazelnuts, and a dash of sea salt; and “Mokaccino”, a Blue Bottle Coffee collaboration with with roasted nut, dried fruit, caramel, and cocoa notes.

Brazil-based AMMA Chocolates doesn’t restrict themselves to cocoa beans. They introduced us to bars made with cupuaçu (pronounced coo-poo-asoo), fruit borne by a tropical sister plant to the cacao tree. The bar has sour, earthy notes punctuated with moments of sweet fruitiness, with a silkiness that lets it melt nicely on the tongue.

I first encountered Ritter Sport at a Trader Joe’s as a kid, hence my unhealthy obsession with the “Milk Chocolate with Butter Biscuit” bar. My quest to try every flavor begins now.

Jars filled with Next by Nature’s chocolate-covered fruit made us feel like we were stepping into a candy store. I was partial to the dark chocolate cherries, but was excited to try dark chocolate strawberries and dark chocolate goji berries for the first time.

I can personally attest to Guittard’s excellence in the kitchen: I use it in all of my baking, from chocolate chip cookies to chocolate-dipped eclairs. Besides the company’s baking chips, wafers, and bars for recipes, they sell cocoa powder for drinking and bars intended for eating (although I won’t judge if you eat chocolate chips straight out of the bag).

The Mayan bar–cinnamon and crushed roasted almonds harmonizing with creamy milk chocolate–is a fan favorite at Portland-based Moonstruck Chocolates, but the other bars like milk chocolate sea salt toffee and dark chocolate espresso are just as stellar.

I’m a sucker for seven-layer magic bars, but the sheer number of bar cookie renditions this vendor had got me thinking about new bar cookie ideas.

Bulgaria-based company Corte Diletto dished out its Coppa della Maga product, a stevia-sweetened gelato in creative flavors like grapefruit/bergamot and yogurt/rose petals.

High Road Craft Ice Cream scooped up a number of flavors from their 90+ flavor catalog, including Bake Sale (vanilla ice cream with cookies and brownies), Mango Chile Lime, and Bourbon Burnt Sugar. Alton Brown of Good Eats and Iron Chef America fame recently praised “this is the best ice cream made in America right now”.

Bubbies Homemade Ice Cream & Desserts makes 20 different flavors of mochi ice cream, including lychee, li hing mango, and raspberry white chocolate. The chocolate espresso flavor I sampled enrobed mild coffee ice cream with chocolate-flavored, perfectly-chewy mochi.

3-D printers aren’t just for research laboratories: the MakerBot featured at the show has endless uses for innovative pastry chefs, professional bakers, and mixologists.

My mouth started watering when I saw rows of Prosciutto di Parma legs hanging at Galloni Red Label DOP’s booth. Whether they were real or props is another story. The sliver I sampled was certainly real, with a salty butteriness that made me want to hightail it to my closest Italian market.

Every one of Cinco Jotas ‘ hams and paletas is made from free-range, acorn-fed, pure breed Ibérico pigs, earning the official designation of Bellota (Spanish for acorn). Cured for years and marbled with rich golden fat flavored with an acorn-based nuttiness, the succulent ham melts in the mouth.

Aromatic spices of every color and origin filled a rainbow of jars at this vendor, a metaphor for the vast product diversity housed inside the Javits Center for the show.

This is merely a taste of what the gargantuan convention had to offer; the 3 days allocated for exploring the halls was hardly sufficient for navigating the aisles. Getting to see the wide breadth of specialty food products available globally was humbling. It showed precisely why people join the food industry: to showcase culinary talents and meet friendly folk who are just as passionate about the craft as they are.

Congratulations to the SFFS team for executing such a flawless event: looking forward to attending in the future!

— Nicole Woon