Your proprietor visits Pierre Thiam, of Yolele foods, at the 2022 Summer Fancy Food Show.
At the 2022 Summer Fancy Food Show a couple of weeks back, I was reunited with an old industry friend. Pierre Thiam is a native of Senegal whose Yolélé Foods was founded to import fonio, a couscous-like grain that is grown by small farmers in West Africa; thus his business provides a lifeline for them. I met him at the San Francisco show in 2020, just before the pandemic, and we spent some time tracking down an obscure product whose identity I no longer remember. Since then the fonio business has thrived and he has opened a restaurant, Teranga, in the Africa Center in Harlem. He is a great guy and it was good to learn about his success.
Turkish Ice Cream, made with goat milk, is so dense it has to be coaxed out of the tub with a paddle.
International connections are a big part of doing business at the Fancy Food Show. Many aisles are devoted to a single nation and packed with food producers or their reps who are looking for distribution. One entire aisle in the Saudi section, for example, was devoted to dates and nothing else. I got to try Turkish ice cream made with goat milk (it is so chewy it has to be forced out of its container by a guy with a big paddle) and maybe the best thing I had at the show, a Jordanian pastry called kunafah.
Kunafah is a lacy pastry from Jordan with a center of milk pudding. Best thing I tasted at the show.
Now that I am back in the real world of the USA, I find myself quite nostalgic for the international atmosphere at the show. We may have different political realities but we all shared a love of food, and a love of sharing food. That’s a good thing.
