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GOURMET NEWS JULY 2019 www.gourmetnews.com SUPPLIER NEWS 1 6 A Condiment that Comes with Community tomato harvest in Rio Negro. As a family, much of our time spent bonding revolved around the discovery of ingredients and the overall appreciation of food and wine." After the family moved to the U.S. when Gerard, the youngest of three brothers, was 15, the older boys went off to college, one to UCLA and one in Pasadena, and the whole family focused on finding a sense of community for themselves in West Holly- wood. "In Argentina, everyone was home for dinner at 9 p.m. In the States in the '90s, honor- ing a nightly family dinner schedule was a challenge. There was an increasing feeling of separation," Bo- zoghlian says. "In Buenos Aires, extended family gatherings were the norm on the weekends. Here, we just had the five of us, and the Los Angeles work/university travel times and distances were spreading us thin. Maintain- ing our strongly bonded family unit meant everything." The family worked hard to turn Azniv's recipe collection into the basis for a menu for an authentic Argentinian steakhouse that began attracting other Argentine emi- gres. "Slowly we developed the community we dreamed to have," Bozoghlian says. Today we're blessed to have guests who have been dining with us for 22 years. Families that discovered us when their children were toddlers are now hosting their college graduation celebrations at Carlitos Gardel." Eventually, Max Bozoghlian, the oldest of the three brothers, became one of an early wave of professional sommeliers in Los Angeles, Rodrigo went off to law school, and Gerard, at 21, gradu- ated from his apprenticeship under his mother to become the restaurant's general manager. A couple of years later, Azniv de- cided that she'd laid enough of a foundation for the restaurant's kitchen that she could take a step back from working a regular shift at the restaurant — although she is still very much in charge of the desserts there. Somehow, Gerard decided that he wasn't busy enough just operating the restaurant, and he began working on the development of recipes for the sauces so they could be preserved as shelf-stable products while still maintaining their authentic character. He found mentors in Freddy Carbajal, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Dotta Foods International, Inc., and Eliot Swartz, co-Founder and co-Chair of Two Chefs on a Roll, Inc."Freddy really took me under his wing. Introduced me to some of the top food scientists," Bozoghlian says. "He wanted to see me succeed. Even with his and others' help, it took five years to formulate the first product that's shelf-sta- ble, authentic in terms of composition: staying true to authentic ingredients found in chimichurri; and also authentic in terms of consistency. We don't produce an emul- sified paste. We produce a hand-crafted, free-flowing sauce, and it goes into the jar that way. There's never a time when the full integrity of the sauce is not honored." "Argentines respond to Gardel's Chimichurri because they recognize it as what they've always known chimichurri to be," he continues. "That was my goal — to stay true and honor our traditions." Some of that story is now on the label of each of Gardel's Fine Foods' chimichurri sauces. All made with 100 percent extra virgin olive oil and no added sugar, they are Chimichurri Balsamico, Chimichurri Spicy Balsamico, Chimichurri Autentico and Chimichurri Lime. Each jar holds 8 ounces of sauce and retails for $8.99 to $11.99. Nationwide distribution is avail- able. For more information, visit www.chimichurrisauce.com. GN BY LORRIE BAUMANN To make it in the U.S., you need either fi- nancial capital or intellectual capital, ac- cording to Gerard Bozoghlian, whose family emigrated from Argentina to the U.S. in 1991; "Mom's rich intellectual cap- ital is an archive of Argentine culinary methods and traditions." Those recipes included authentic recipes for Argentinian chimichurri sauces that his mother, Azniv, had developed while she was cooking for the Bozoghlian family and friends. Azniv, herself of Greek descent and who had grown up in a Greek neighbor- hood in Argentina; the food she'd been served at home was what she knew. After she married Bozoghlian's father, Carlos, and settled into housekeeping, she felt the need to expand her culinary repertoire, so she took herself off to culinary school. "The running joke in the family is that Dad told Mom that he could eat dolmades and moussaka a couple of times a week, but that he wanted his dose milanesa, lasagna and empanadas as often as possible," Bo- zoghlian says. "She really has an ardent passion for food, to become one with the essence, the roots and eventual influences of Argentine culinary traditions. Every fam- ily vacation was grounded and planned around culinary excursions. Visiting the Rosa Mosqueta harvest in Bariloche or the Bare Snacks Offers New Fruit Chip Medleys create a product that would offer the same multiple-fruit appeal but that would also be uniquely different from the Starbucks offer- ing, Padki said. Pairing up two Bare Snacks favorites was an easy first answer to that question. "There's a lot of consumer love that's been going into the apple and coconut chips over the years," Padki said. Apples for the chips, which are baked to a crunch with no added sugar or fat, come from farmers in Washing- ton and Oregon, while the strawberries are grown in North America. "It's not a freeze- dried strawberry," Padki said. "It's a real baked strawberry that preserves the color and the flavor notes of a real strawberry." For the bare Medley Pineapple Chips & Coconut Chips, Bare Snacks went farther abroad to source both pineapples and mid- maturity coconuts in Asia. Using coconuts at their mid-maturity stage makes for a co- conut chip with a smooth and silky mouthfeel that still has the crunch that Ameri- can consumers want in a chip, Padki said. Younger coconuts are more water than co- conut meat, but as the coconut matures, it de- velops more meat. As it ages beyond the mid- maturity point, there's even more coconut meat, but it can become dry and fibrous, according to Padki. "The consumer says it's just too dry and unpleasant too eat," he said. Bare Snacks then infuses the toasted co- conut with natural flavor from a little bit of cane sugar and some sea salt to make chips that are then mixed with baked pineapple chips to create a snack that's a good source of fiber as well as the fun crunch. "Every- thing we do is done with a unique baked process. We absolutely focus on simple in- gredients, simple processes," Padki said. "We package them the right way in differ- ent sizes to bring them into the retail chan- nels." Like all Bare Snacks products, the bare Medley Pineapple Chips & Coconut Chips and bare Medley Apple Chips & Straw- berry Chips are certified by Non-GMO Project and have no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. They're offered in 1.6- ounce to 1.8-ounce single-serving stand-up pouches, which are resealable so they can also be enjoyed over a couple of snack oc- casions. They'll retail for $4.29, in line with the rest of the company's product line, and they'll be available nationwide this sum- mer. For more information, visit www.baresnacks.com. GN BY LORRIE BAUMANN Bare Snacks ® , which makes a line of baked fruit chip snacks that the company calls Snacks Gone Simple ® , launched a pair of new products driven by customer demand this year at Natural Products Expo West. Bare Medley Pineapple Chips & Coconut Chips and bare Medley Apple Chips & Strawberry Chips are spin-offs from a sim- ilar snack chip medley that has sold well over several months in a Starbucks stores market test, prompting requests from cus- tomers who wanted to know where they could buy the product elsewhere, said Bare Snacks Chief Executive Officer Santosh Padki. "After the test launch, everybody in the office knew we were onto something," he said. "We used to get phone calls in ad- dition to inbound inquiries on the web- site." After the success of the Starbucks market test, which involved a medley of banana, pineapple and strawberry chips, the com- pany began thinking about how they could Cheating Gourmet Announces Rebrand to Scott & Jon's Cheating Gourmet, makers of premium frozen seafood products, has renamed the brand Scott & Jon's ® . Now named after co- Founders and brothers Scott and Jon De- mers, the rebrand is accompanied by a fresh look and innovative new line of pasta and noodle bowls. Like the brand's flagship frozen shrimp and rice bowls, the new pasta and noodle bowls feature sustainably- sourced shrimp and are all under 300 calo- ries. Cheating Gourmet was founded by the Demers brothers, who recognized a lack of high-quality, on-the-go seafood options. With convenience in mind, they intro- duced a popular line of mi- crowavable shrimp and rice bowls. Now available in the frozen seafood section of retailers nationwide, the rebrand is in- tended to reinforce the Demers' commitment to quality and trans- parency. "Rebranding with our own names was our way of connecting with our customers, family-to-family," said co-Founder Jon De- mers. "We are deeply committed to produc- ing quality products that support the needs of today's busy family. There's no better way to demonstrate that commitment than by having our names on every package." Scott & Jon's Shrimp Rice Bowls are available in seven flavors includ- ing: Garlic Butter, Creamy Parme- san, Coconut, Jambalaya, Shrimp Risotto, Sweet Chipotle and Cilantro Lime. Shrimp Noodle Bowls are available in Ramen and Spicy Ramen. Shrimp Pasta Bowls are available in Shrimp Alfredo and Shrimp Scampi. GN

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