About once a year, I run an article about some of the new foods that are out there, with a primary focus on trends—what’s in style to eat these days. Because the thing about food is that sometimes a food isn’t great, but if you see someone else eating it you’re suddenly in the mood.
“It looks a lot better when you’re eating it!”
Anyway, the way I put these articles together is I don’t just decide what’s in style based on what the people in my house eat. If I did, the trends would mostly be noodles and midnight cereal. Instead, I go to Kosherfest, which is a food industry trade show. And it is at Kosherfest that the manufacturers tell us what’s in style to eat. Based largely on what they just started manufacturing, which is sometimes based on availability. Because some of them have this one base resource, such as raisins, and they’re like, “What else can we do with raisins that we haven’t done yet? Do you think anyone would eat them if we make them spicy?”
So they create a new product, and their friends are like, “No, it’s good!” because they’re their friends, and they want to be supportive. So they have to show it to people who aren’t their friends so they can see if it’s actually good. People have to taste it and say, “Yeah, I would sell this in my store or restaurant or camp canteen! Which one do I run again?” And they check their badge to see what they wrote in order to get into the show.
But alas, it is not my job to tell you if something tastes good, I decided. That’s opinion anyway. It’s my job to tell you if something is trendy. Because that’s fact. If you buy a food because it’s trendy and it turns out it doesn’t taste good, that’s your problem. Probably you’re going to say “Yum!” because you don’t want to look like you’re not trendy. So we’re all good.
And so this year, I bravely traveled to Kosherfest—a journey of over seven miles from my house—to do what I have done almost every year since I started writing articles, except for during COVID and also the one year in the middle that Kosherfest did not believe that what I do is “Press.” I also bravely taste several new foods so that you don’t have to.
Also, every year I somehow end up drinking a schnapps cup full of oil. This year it was pistachio oil. The guy at the booth was saying, “Have some! It’s Shehakol!” Like I hadn’t already made all the brachos and had everything in the hall in mind.
“You didn’t have this in mind!”
Pistachio oil is a new product that was created, as all oils are, for people who are allergic to every other kind of oil. Though to be honest, mankind is allergic to oil. It causes breakouts, massive swelling in the abdominal area, and whenever I drink a shot glass of it, I have this irrepressible urge to cough.
Anyway, I tasted the oil, and the guy smiled and said, “It tastes like pistachios, no?”
Yeah, it does. I love drinking my pistachios. That’s how I enjoy them. I curl up on the sofa… I was using a cup anyway for the shells, I might as well fill the cup with oil. No shells! I think.
But in general, pistachio-based products were a big trend this year. For example, another new product was pre-shelled pistachio nuts that come in “scorpion pepper” flavor.
In case you’re not sure, scorpion peppers are, in fact, spicy. Non-spicy peppers are named after things like bells and bananas and Italians.
To put this in perspective, jalapeño is something like the 100th hottest pepper, according to official rankings of people who had too many shot glasses. Scorpion is third. Though to be fair, once you get past jalapeño, you can’t feel your tongue anyway. The differences are all meaningless from that point.
But I did taste them, because I like jalapeño, so this is obviously the next step.
The only thing to drink afterward in the immediate vicinity was the pistachio oil.
Another huge trend in the area of drinks, besides pistachios, was infusing drinks with honey. Because everyone always has a huge problem with sugary drinks. But this solves everything!
For example, I tried some infused water from this one company called “Bee’s Water.” Which does sound like the name of a business, I guess.
“What’s going on here?”
“None of your Bee’s Water.”
Isn’t that near Far Rockaway?
Then there was a drink called Equine Coffee. I was wondering what that was infused with.
It was infused with horsepower, as it turns out. I asked. Though despite that, they didn’t want to call it Horse Coffee. They had to call it Equine, and if you know, you know.
“Equine Coffee: It gives you horsepower!”
“So I can carry people on my back and run 40 miles per hour?”
“No, horsepower. Not horse powers.”
And of course, one big trend that you already know about is charcuterie boards, which is fancy for, “Cold cuts that probably don’t have to be refrigerated but I think maybe we’re going to anyway just in case.”
And you know that charcuterie has to be good, because it has cute in the name.
And speaking of food that can be served out on a cutting board without spilling gravy everywhere on its way to the dining room, there seems to be a huge trend of companies making smoked salmon.
No company called it lox. They called it “smoked salmon” like it’s the newest thing, and it’s served as a whole fish minus the unappetizing parts on a slab of wood.
Though I have to admit, “smoked salmon” does sound better than “lox.” I’ve fallen for this. I once bought smoked salmon, and it wasn’t until I brought it home and ate it at Shalosh Seudos that I was like, “This tastes a lot like lox!” and my wife said, “Obviously. I thought you knew.”
And of course some of the smoked salmons were infused with honey, making it an excellent product to buy for the Tishrei Yomim Tovim, to confuse the bees.
Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].
