At food festival, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that zing

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 18, 1997 | by Jeffrey R. Sipe

There's chocolate-covered popcorn and lemons. And there's apple sausage and raspberry chipotle sauce. And then there's jackfruit, the Japanese answer to fruitcake ... or something.

That's ass-kickin'," one man nonchalantly informed his companion as they moved through the crowd at the 43rd annual Fancy Food and Confection Show in New York City. The object of the apparent superlative? A happy bunch of folks wearing T-shirts emblazoned with flames pitching "Ass-Kickin Original Hot Sauce."

More than 30,000 food-lovers and entrepreneurs attended the summer trade show sponsored by the National Association of the Specialty Food Trade, most of them on the prowl for the next trend in gourmet foods. The future may be hard to read, but one thing is certain: Hot sauce is enjoying unprecedented popularity.

"Salsa is currently the country's hottest-selling condiment," Annette Volpicelli, a spokeswoman for a condiment company, told Insight. "It's a tough market to break into right now."

If tongue-burn is a function of the quality and quantity of peppers pulverized for one jar of hot sauce, marketers have managed to distinguish their product in creative ways. Outrageous brand names appeared to be the best way to grab attention. A quick dip of a tortilla chip provided ample proof that "Scorned Woman" lives up to its slogan "Hell Hath No Fury Like...." And "Bone Suckin' Hiccuppin' Sauce" would tantalize most jaded taste buds.

Sausages were as plentiful as hot sauces, some of them crammed with tasty novelties. Aidells' apple-stuffed sausage, flavored with small chunks of apple, was nominated for a New Product award, for example. Sausage maker Bruce Aidells, a former endocrinologist, apparently found cooking preferable and certainly more profitable than cancer research. Unfortunately, his apple sausage failed to garner best-in-show, an honor bestowed upon a raspberry chipotle sauce.

There were endless variations on the theme of chocolate-covered almonds. Salespeople impeccably coiffed and tailored acted as though they were selling caviar, not handing out samples of pretzels coated with caramel, honey-nut cream and peanut butter. "It's in Sak's," sniffed one middle-aged saleswoman, referring to her chocolate-laced popcorn. "It's retailing at just under $25. It's the only size they wanted." Just down the aisle, competitors were hawking "Champop," touted as "hand-selected" popcorn and packaged in an imitation champagne bottle.

"There are a lot of things here that aren't healthy," confided one exhibitor as she foisted a low-in-sodium contains-nooil salad dressing on one visitor. Another health-conscious culinary genius explained that her chocolate-covered lemons "don't give you -- uh, you know -- gas."

The show's new-products section attracted a lot of attention, too, though the vast majority of these concoctions seemed to be old products in new packaging. "The Great Buckaroo 'Giddy-Up!' Kit," for example, offers a sample of barbecue sauces in a nifty wooden package festooned with a lasso-swinging cowboy.

On the other hand, a Japanese company has introduced "Jackfruit Chips," the taste of which is as mysterious as the fruit itself. Ask any American about the last time he or she enjoyed some jackfruit.

If anyone truly tugged the heartstrings of the fancy-food crowd, it was Dachen Kyaping, the Tibetan creator of the "Khatsa," a line of sauces. Dachen had escaped Tibet with her mother just before the Chinese invasion. Her father spent 21 years there as a political prisoner before joining his family in Seattle in 1980. Using traditional Tibetan recipes and ingredients, the family has released sauces that even competitors are praising.

Dachen became very animated when relating her encounter with the Dali Lama. "I gave His Holiness a gift pack," she told Insight, "and he loved it!" Seven percent of the company's profits go to World Concern, a Seattle-based charity with ties to Tibet.

Few products at the Fancy Food Show had such endorsements and many were, well, downright tacky. One snack sporting the questionable name "White Trash" declared itself "delightfully decadent white-chocolate-flavored bark stirred into a nutritious mix of crisp of cereals, pretzels and pecan halves."

Mmmm! White Trash, anyone?