Carnegie Deli booth at 2022 Summer Fancy Food Show, hosted by Old World Provisions. Chef Dan Spitz is on the right.
Old World Provisions is a respected supplier of smoked meats sited in Troy, NY. Their product, pastrami especially, is featured at many restaurants and delis throughout the northeast. At the 2022 Summer Fancy Food Show, I discovered they now have a licensing agreement with the former owners of the legendary Carnegie Deli which allows them to reproduce the recipes and market the results.
I didn’t try the “Carnegie Deli Pastrami” but expect it would be appropriately greasy and peppery based on the Old World product. Did try the “Carnegie Deli Cheesecake” and it was wonderful, a dryer product than most cheesecake but still sinfully good. Chef Dan Spitz, a local presence, was in the booth manning the meat discussions and he slipped me an excellent hot dog. (I had to sneak some mustard from another exhibitor.) He mentioned that he will be working again at the Fire Feast at Pitney Meadows Farms, a sumptuous event under the open skies that will be back this July in Saratoga Springs.
Whipnotic booth in the Incubator section at Fancy Food Show.
Saratoga Water and Death Wish Coffee were also represented at the show. Also, to stretch the “local” a bit (though not to NYCers, who believe anything north of the Tappan Zee, I mean Cuomo, Bridge is one big ZIP code), Whipnotic out of Ithaca had an interesting product in which they affix a flavor module to a tube of pressurized whipped cream and it flavors the product as it is squirted, a la a Starbuck’s coffee drink, also adding color and a swirl. I tried the vanilla salted caramel and would come back for more. This startup is part of the Cornell Agritech incubator, one of several incubator programs that support fledgling companies in their early stages. Based on interest at the show, I would predict Whipnotic is going places (starting with the Fresh Market chain, which will carry the product soon). They claim theirs is the first innovation in whipped cream in 75 years.
