Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Food Hospitality World exhibition at the CTICC

Food Trade Exhibition time. We started with a visit on Thursday morning last week to Hostex at CTICC which, sadly for us, was very much a non-event this year – too many bed companies and garden furniture. Things were much more interesting on Tuesday at another trade show, the Food Hospitality World Africa 2014, featuring more food oriented companies with some of our best producers like Fynbos Fine foods, Pesto Princess and Indezi cheeses, some of whom will follow through to the Good Food and Wine Show this weekend. And we were able to meet and congratulate Emma Dean, the winner of Masterchef Australia with her husband, who was walking through the show. A charming couple. Lynne has been following the various Masterchef programmes and still has about four of the Australian programmes to watch on PVR. She didn’t know who the winner was until she opened the newspaper that morning, which gave the game away.
The Food Hospitality World is organised by the same Italian company that now owns The Good Food and Wine show
We were delighted to find the Pesto Princess stand with their excellent products. We were next to them at the Neighbourgoods Market in the Old Biscuit Mill. Sadly, we have both stopped selling at the market. They will carry through to the Good Food and Wine show this weekend.
And our favourite Chilli products company, who supplied us from the beginning when we had our shop. Rozelle and Julian Abramson of Fynbos Fine foods are demonstrating the full range of their products and their excellent rebranding.
We were delighted to meet Rob Cornell and Paul Nash from Indezi River Cheeses in Natal. We have loved their cheeses for many years, especially their blue cheese, and were very interested to taste some of their new cheeses and to hear of their new move into many different goat cheeses, which will be on the market soon. At the moment the goats are kidding and there is no milk for cheese until the baby goats are weaned.
There was also a number of Italian suppliers exhibiting their wares. They showed us the good Italian wines they are importing into South Africa. We tasted some superb Parma hams, mortadella sausages, salamis and cheese and had a small taste of some really good Italian gelato. Lynne tasted some real pistachio and a sour cherry ice cream – there is nothing of this quality available here at the moment. We do hope they will find importers who will work with them, as many of these products are exactly what we need to help raise the standards of the local commercial produce. The artisanal producers here are doing very well but the big boys are turning out horrible quality. There was one local stand showing polony and horribly coloured frankfurters which, quite frankly, we wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.

Roberto Bottega of Idiom and Whalehaven wines showed us the extensive range of Italian wines his family is importing
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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

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