Inspired Bacon

Chipotle-infused jerky, truffle-flavoured popcorn and hot chocolate on a stick lead the charge of innovative foodstuffs poised for glory to follow their triumphant unveiling at a semi-annual upmarket edibles show designed to stimulate the tastebuds of hungry-for-novelty foodies everywhere. The National Association for the Specialty Food Trade is a not-for-profit association that infuses the late January deep freeze with an glut of gastronomic excitement in the form of the Winter Fancy Food Show, held last month in San Francisco.

Open only to the specialty food trade, this annual spectacle whets the appetite of the grocers, restaurateurs and specialty product purveyors who frequent it in pursuit of the next big thing courtesy of the 1,300 companies, promoters, and exhibitors from some 35 countries in attendance.

Among the highlights for which we might keep our culinary antennae charged? Wine-soused anything, beverages steeped with healing promise and fruit purees in pouches poised to reinvigorate the toils of uninspired bartenders with fresh life.

There’s still a preponderance of bacon out there, in everything from marshmallows to sodapop and candy.

Café Classico Foods offers a blackberry cabernet sorbet that dispenses at last with the question of how to pair wine and dessert.

Living Tree Community Foods’ chia seed butter provides a healthful alternative for morning toast makers.

Environmental sustainability tastes better thanks to a stash of exotic rice varieties grown via the “system of rice intensification,” a cool new program that revolutionizes rice-growing by using considerably less water than is traditionally required.

Speaking of the wet stuff, water’s still making a splash with slick food enthusiasts, pedaled at the show in coconut form, as a between-course palate cleanser and as a herb-infused miracle drink.

Finally, it is clearly the year of the sweet potato, with this tuber-licious super vegetable sprouting up in everything from crackers to pies.