Food Adventurist Aihui’s Favorites from San Francisco’s Fancy Food Show

Prepare to be hungry! Our favorite “Food Adventurist” Aihui takes us on a yum-worthy tour of the recent San Francisco Fancy Food Show:

The Fancy Food Show was back in town again, as it is every January in San Francisco. Over 1,500 food makers participate in the food show every year, showcasing their best and the finest. Everyone had a marketing gimmick, from big mascots to samples giveaway, all efforts to attract more business, distribution channels and press coverage. It’s an insane experience to eat your way through the show, but it’s all worth it!

Here are few that stood out from the crowd:

The PIG is not going anywhere! Bacon seems to be everywhere; there’s a bacon product to satisfy your savory or sweet cravings. Bacon chocolate from Vosges was unbelivable tasty and their Bacon Toffee ice-cream was sinfully good! Before you pop a bag of pop corn and enjoy your movie night, you may want to try Bacon Pop Corn from J & D’s the next time! The most unforgettable bacon product was Bacon Infused Trout Roe. Deborah Diamond, founder and CEO of California Caviar Company shared with me during our interview her vision of having sustainable caviar and gourmet foods accessible for everyone and everyday.

One of the side effects of attending the fancy food show is SUGAR RUSH! There were abundance chocolates, candies, sweet drinks throughout the exhibition halls! Two of my faves were gourmet Caramel Swirl mashmallows from Plush Puffs and Carbenet Dark Chocolates from Z. Cioccolato. Plush Puffs booth definitely got lots of attention with their little fire pots to let curious foodies toast their marshmallows!

What goes well with spicy, cruncy kimchi? What about Watermelon Wheat Beer? This combination may not sound tasty but you got to try it! It’s delicious! Mother-in-laws Kimchi, the brand and name itself was enough to catch my attention! It’s spicy, crunchy and nicely fermented! Gulping down a can of Watermelon Wheat Beer was definitely the way to tame the heat!

That’s a wrap for Fancy Food Show 2010! Hungry yet?

About the awesome Aihui: Aihui (pronounced as i-we) is a technologist, food adventurist, cook and a full-time foodie! Her never-ending quest for good food and love for technology were the key ingredients to whipping up a foodie social networking site, LoveWithFood.com, a place to discover and share a tasty array of recipes and products to feed the art and soul of cooking. Follow us on twitter: @lovewithfood and @aihui

Meet Foodzie, The Etsy-Like Site for Artisanal Foods.

With all the brouhaha here this week about TechCrunch50 spouting startups in San Francisco, and the just-concluded DemoFall, held in San Diego, it’s easy to think that all the cool entrepreneurial stuff is only happening in California.

That’s why I was so happy to hear about Foodzie, one of the intriguing new site concepts emerging from TechStars, an incubator program in Boulder, Colorado. TechStars was founded by a collective of Colorado-based entrepreneurs as a way of promoting entrepreneurial activity in their home state.

Guru favorite Springwise reports:
Consumers interested in handmade goods already have online marketplace Etsy to help them find new treasures, and now Foodzie aims to bring similar capabilities to the foodies of the world.

Based in Boulder, Colo., Foodzie is an online marketplace dedicated to helping consumers discover and buy food from small artisan producers and growers. The site acts as an aggregator that focuses on gourmet and organic health foods, allowing small producers to set up storefronts to display and sell their products. Though Foodzie hasn’t yet officially launched its full marketplace, three producers are up and running in a “sneak preview” version of the site: Seth Ellis Chocolatier, Boulder Popcorn and Tetulia Teas, all out of Colorado.

Nicely designed producer pages feature not just a selection of products for sale online, but also information on ingredients and allergens, tags, photos and background details on the people behind the store.

Foodzie operates on a commission-based model whereby producers pay the company a fee of 20 percent for each transaction conducted through the site, allowing the producers to keep a full 80 percent of what they charge. (Traditional retailers, by contrast, often charge fees as high as 50 percent.)

Foodzie is currently seeking USD 350,000 in seed funding. C’mon readers, step up to the plate (pun intended) and give these folks some moolah.