JR gets all fancy (food)

The life of a quasi-journalist/blogger-type person isn't always the glamorous romp you might think, but sometimes you do get to enjoy some awesome stuff. I got to check out the New York Fancy Food Show last weekend, and I'm still stuffed.

I don't even know where to begin. Chocolate, cheese, cookies, cakes, bread, wine, olive oil, soda, tea, coffee, caramels, holy cow! There were booths from national retailers (Jelly Belly, Scharffen Berger) and from micros (local chocolatiers, etc.). It was mainly a business expo where producers look for distributors and/or retailers, and vice versa, but every food booth had something to taste and taste I did. I think my cholesterol might never go back down.



I spent five hours on the main floor and didn't get to see everything. I also didn't know until fifteen minutes before closing time that the show took up the entire lower level too! Next year I'm doing two days.

This represents about .00000001% of the cheese on display.

I had so much cheese that I never want to see cheese again. OK, that's not true, but I had a lot of cheese.

There were booths and even entire pavilions representing countries like France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and on and on. There was even a booth from some strange backwards place called "West Virginia." I skipped it.

I found out about an interesting "chef search" website called Book of Cooks. It's a search engine where you can type in your location and the type of food you'd like, and it finds a chef who makes it. It seems like more of a Greenwich/Darien thing, but still kind of cool.

I saw the most incredible chocolates I've ever seen: Norman Love Confections. The pictures on the website don't do these chocolates justice. They look like glass sculptures or marbles. I didn't get a chance to try one, as their booth was understandably busy.

I'll just let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Argentinian olive oil.

Yummy chocolates.


A leg o' ham.

Clever uses of marzipan!

It's called Tur-Duc-Hen, but it's stuffed with seafood? I don't get it.

An unfortunately named soda from Slovenia

And finally, Baconnaise!! Believe it or not, it's vegetarian and kosher!