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GOURMET NEWS DECEMBER 2016 www.gourmetnews.com SMORGASBORD SMORGASBORD 2 3 Alef Sausage Inc. 7 www.alefsausage.com 847.968.2533 Le Gruyere 5 www.gruyere.com +41(0)269218410 SaltWorks Inc. 3 www.seasalt.com 800.353.7258 Stonewall Kitchen 9 www.stonewallkitchen.com 888.826.1752 White Coffee Corp 24 www.whitecoffee.com 718.204.7900 CALENDAR January 22-24 Winter Fancy Food Show San Francisco, California www.specialtyfood.com/shows-events February 9-11 NAFEM Show Orlando, Florida www.thenafemshow.org March 8-12 Natural Products Expo West Anaheim, California www.expowest.com March 30-31 Vegas Food Expo Las Vegas, Nevada www.vegasfoodexpo.com April 1-4 SNAXPO Savannah, Georgia www.snaxpo.com May 2-4 SIAL Canada Toronto, Canada www.sialcanada.com/en May 3-4 The Food & Drink Trade Show Malvern, Worcestershire, England www.thefoodanddrinktradeshow.co.uk May 20-23 NRA Show Chicago, Illinois www.show.restaurant.org/home May 23-25 Sweets & Snacks Expo Chicago, Illinois www.sweetsandsnacks.com June 4-6 Dairy-Deli-Bake Anaheim, California www.iddba.org ADVERTISER INDEX ADVERTISER PAGE WEBSITE PHONE ADVERTISER INDEX Anthony Bourdain Advises Grocers to Find Ways to Offer Authenticity BY LORRIE BAUMANN The conventional supermarket may be doomed by competition with online retail- ers and delivery services and by Americans' search for authenticity in the foods they eat, according to Anthony Bourdain, a fea- tured speaker at this year's Dairy-Deli-Bake Seminar & Expo. Dairy-Deli-Bake is a production of the International Dairy, Deli and Bakery Asso- ciation, and the trade show was held June 5-7 in Houston, Texas. Next year's event is scheduled for June 4-6 in Anaheim. Bourdain pointed out the rapid evolution of Americans' interest in their food, which has helped propel his career into the strat- osphere. "Eighteen years ago, I was dunk- ing French fries for a living, more or less," he told a packed theater. "Life was rela- tively good, but I was quite certain that I would never see Vietnam, for instance." Today, Bourdain is better known as a best-selling author, television host and ex- ecutive producer of CNN's "Parts Un- known" than as the chef he was before "Kitchen Confidential," his memoir of his young days in restaurant kitchens, became an unexpected best-seller. He is currently developing a New York City food hall mod- eled after a Singapore street market, a col- lection of small market stalls, where shoppers will buy fresh and freshly pre- pared products from a variety of vendors. The project is now projected to open in 2018, and in preparation, Bourdain has been giving a lot of thought to the kind of food Americans want to eat and how they want to shop for it. He pointed out in his talk to the Dairy- Deli-Bake attendees that the American culi- nary tastes are evolving rapidly and pointed to the growing importance of organic pro- duce in today's supermarkets and to the popularity of kale as an example. "Kale, who used to eat kale? It was garbage," he said. "Mario Batali was among the first to har- ness the power of television celebrity. He opened Babbo and started serving hooves and snouts, brains and kidneys, which is to say authentic Italian food the way they made it in Italy. No one was asking for this in America. Mario created a a market for that," Bourdain said. "Everybody wants that now. This was entirely a chef-led thing. We care about who's making our food now, for the first time in history. We also care about where our food comes from. We never cared about that before." "It's been good for your industry. I well remember supermarkets and delis of the past where you walked in and there was two types of bread – Wonder Bread and some other stuff. Fresh herbs were never to be seen," he noted. Now, though, supermarket chains can't keep up with the speed of this evolution, challenged as they are by the rapid devel- opment of options in the food marketplace such as meal kit delivery services and on- line grocers. In New York City, for instance, his grocery store shopping is already lim- ited primarily to fresh ingredients, since he can have anything nonperishable that's heavy or awkward to carried simply deliv- ered to his apartment. "If it's not perishable, and I don't need to squeeze it, I'm buying it online," he said. "I'm not trusting anyone to pick out my cheese for me. I want to poke that.... Can you keep up? I think you're going to have to change and special- ize." Bourdain predicts that supermarkets may eventually continue to exist only as either a virtual space or as a collection of specialty shops within stores – the concept behind his market. American consumers will always want to shop for their meat, their cheeses and their fish in person be- cause they'll want to be sure that they're getting fresh product, but they'll want to buy their meat from a specialty butcher who will sell them organ meats and spe- cialty cuts rather than just the muscle cuts that supermarket meat counters typically offer today and that offer very little chal- lenge to a cook eager to impress friends with demonstrations of culinary skill, Bourdain predicted. "I can train a reason- ably intelligent poodle how to cook a filet mignon. I would rather be complimented on a cheek or a hoof," he said. Young people in particular are now fol- lowing the lead of a new generation of ris- ing celebrity chefs who aren't so much interested in easy preparations of luxury in- gredients. These chefs are increasingly likely to have come from an Asian or His- panic family background and to have grown up in an ethnically diverse neighbor- hood, and they're now often celebrating simple bowls of noodles or street tacos with interesting flavors rather than the tradi- tional American dishes – the foods they grew up eating in their homes and neigh- borhoods. He noted that 78 percent of Houston residents under the age of 30 are not of Anglo-Saxon family origin. "That's a hell of a lot of people who grew up eating something other than meat loaf," he said. The young people who are following these young chefs are driven by an intense search for authenticity in their food, ac- cording to Bourdain. "What are people looking for in food now? What are they valuing? It has changed. I think what peo- ple are looking for more than anything else is perceived authenticity. They want that sense that they're getting the real thing, the real deal," he said. For today's grocer, the key to remaining relevant in the face of this rapidly evolving food marketplace might be to emulate the traditional cooks who spend their whole culinary lives doing one kind of food, sometimes through more than one genera- tion, and, through practice, learn how to do that food very well, he said. "Find the thing you do better than anyone else.... Ask yourself what you're good at first. That's the way to relevance – asking yourself what you can do that the person across the street can't do or won't do," he said. "Swim against the current," he advised. "Decide you're not going to do what every- one else is doing just as well.... A certain level of fearlessness is required here – and confidence in yourself." GN Company with a popular line is looking for quality representatives in different parts of the country. Established accounts are preferred. Please inquire. aristonspecialties@hotmail.com 860.263.8498 CLASSIFIED

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