Summer Fancy Food Show Day 3! (Eat Hard: With a Vengeance Part 1)

Enter the delicious and aromatic laboratory of Alice & The Magician!

Since I had to ride the train(s) back to Jersey after the show, and go back to work the very next day, I made sure that day three was my shortest and easiest day with the least amount of showroom to cover. This way I'd be less zombie-like towards the end. For my last day in NY I went through the North Hall area of the show where some very interesting new products were hiding.

So the North Hall was the smallest, but don't let that fool you. It's still freaking huge. You have the whole hall and then that HUGE room!

Check out my other Summer Fancy Food Show Coverage Posts! 

Day One, Level 1 (Part 1) 

Day Two (Electric Boogaloo), Level 3

Day 3! (Eat Hard: With a Vengeance Part 1)    (Part 2) 

Illuminated bottles were a very VERY nice touch.I could have photographed this booth for hours.

On DAY TWO I met up with Eric from Junk Food Guy to talk food and we even took another photo together! Click HERE to see my awkwardness. I really need to learn how to pose...

Anyway, when we met up he mentioned the Alice & The Magician booth in the North Hall, so I made sure they were my first stop of the day!

I had actually seen this name in the program and circled it on day one because...well, I had absolutely no idea what their product was. With a name like "Alice & The Magician" what could it be? Turns out it's beautifully packaged aromatics. The product was advertised as a way to enhance drinks. If you've ever had a stuffed nose you might have noticed food doesn't taste as great. That's because you can't smell it. What this product does is it enhances whatever you add it to by adding lovely aromatics that range from fruity, to herbaceous to...cake-y! They had a chocolate cake aroma I want to wear as a perfume!

Plus they had an amazing display. This looks like a page from the old I SPY books I used to obsess over as a kid. It's spooky, alluring, and just...magical. Which really suits the products name. At their booth they offered little cups of plain ol' tonic water, which you tried first on it's own, then I got various samples with the sprayed on aromatics and the drink was truly transformed. Now, I'm not much of a drinker so this was cool, but what really got me interested was the herbaceous way you could enhance soup! One spray of cilantro or citrus on plain instant ramen and it almost tastes like Pho! There's way more to this than boozy goodness. I was really glad I stopped by this booth and I plan on buying a sprayer or two for my pantry. (I know all this gushing sounds sponsored, and I WISH it was, but it's not. The booth was just really pretty and the product was just... so cool!)

It may not have a cool backdrop with dry ice and beakers, but this extra virgin honey was unlike any honey I had ever had before. It was so THICK. All caps worthy thick.

Getting this on a spoon one-handed was a struggle, but it was worth it. This was so creamy and sweet and flavorful. I buy a lot of honey products every year, both locally made and from grocery stores, but this? I had never seen anything like it! It's like honey, cake frosting, and condensed milk combined into one! I bet this would be AMAZING as a scone or cupcake topping.

Now for something a little different, slaw! When I eat hot dogs I'm a mustard and relish kind of girl, and this is the best of both worlds, all with a delightful cabbage crunch. This stuff was GREAT and I plan on tracking a jar down this week (if I can) for the 4th of July goodies I'll be eating with my boyfriend and his family. Plus my aunt, who is also a mustard and relish kind of girl, has to give this a try. I bet she'll love it just as much as I do.

It was so good you didn't even need a hot dog. I ate it right out of the sample cup with a spoon! Plus the ladies at the booth were very friendly and adorkable with their "Have a slaw-some day" slogan. They're my kind of people.

Now, the rocks on the right looks like pink Himalayan rock salt, but it's not. This salt is found right here in America. It has a beautiful coloring, and a lovely flavor. It's a lovely addition to my pantry and...

LOOK at the freaking adorable tiny salt shaker sample. Just look at it. I just...I can't. I am a purse condiment carrier. I have a little balsamic glaze bottle I take around with me and now this little guy has joined my purse-seasoning team. He's so stinking cute and functional!

There were a lot of nut butters at the show, which is a category I normally don't get all that excited about, but I really loved the texture of these bnutty spreads. They had a lot of crispy, almost cookie-like, bits mixed into the peanut butter, and yet, it was gluten free! I tried the blueberry and it tasted like crispy crunchy Blueberry Morning with a hint of Reeses cup filling. (But with less salt.) I almost walked past this booth but as soon as I tried their tiny spoon-sized sample I turned around and walked back for more. I got a tiny sample size from them to review in the near future.

After all the sweet and savory treats, Little Bird was bringing the heat! These chocolates were NO joke. I stopped for a sample and as a lover of spicy chocolates, this stuff kicked my butt! It was way spicier than any other candy bar I had on the showroom floor.

I stopped to take some photos and as you can see, the lovely ladies of the booth were more than happy to photobomb the pants off me. They came in 2nd at the 2016 Scovie awards, so that should tell you, the spice levels here are NO JOKE.

She's got major photo booming skills, and she gave me a fistful of spicy chocolate samples. (They had a spicy simple syrup as well, but the chocolates were more my speed. The syrup might've kicked my butt a little too hard.)

To soothe my mouth I grabbed a soda sample from Virgil's booth. A while ago my uncle gave me a bottle of Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer to review, he loves that stuff. I told the guys running the booth about how much my uncle loved it, and they gave me a free bottle for him. Really awesome guys, and if you're a fan of Harry Potter (like me and my uncle) and you can't afford to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter to get a glass of your own...be sure to check it out!

Hummus is YUMMUS. The roasted red pepper hummus was my favorite. It was sweet, smokey, and it tasted really fresh, almost as if it was homemade! Very impressive for a packaged pre-made hummus, and I liked that it had some texture to it.

It wasn't perfectly smooth like a lot of other processed hummus tubs.

Black Market had some very simplistic but stunning packaging. The white containers are sorbets and the black are gelato. I went for the lemon and strawberry sorbets and both were very refreshing! After all, I was only halfway through the floor at this point, I needed a little pick-me-up to make it to the finish line!

Since I buy a lot of sweets from the Asian Food Market I'm aware that the citrus family goes well beyond lemons, oranges, limes and grapefruit...but mansi? Never heard of it!

The juice is sold in little cartons and it tastes like...everything. I don't even know how to describe it, it has the sweetness of Mandarin oranges, the slight dryness of grapefruit, and the tangy tartness of limes. It was really complex and refreshing when served cold...

But you can also warm these containers up and serve it hot, like a soothing tea! When hot it tasted even sweeter. I thought I would like it best chilled, but honestly, hot was my favorite way to drink it. It was like a soothing honey lemon tea, but better!

It's moon cheese! Freeze dried cheese snacks that are gluten free, crispy, and just...so darn cool. I've had astronaut ice cream, and freeze dried fruits, and earlier in the show I had freeze dried veggies...but savory cheese? I had actually seen these on an EmmymadeinJapan review video a few months ago, so I was very excited to try these. The texturing is that crispy, light, almost rice-paper styrofoam texturing that all freeze dried fruits get, but when you let it sit on your tongue and re-hydrate it turns back into a soft cheese nugget! This was very fun, but I bet it would make a great addition to salads. The people at this booth were kind enough to give me a bag so I could do a full blown review on the blog because I was so hype!

Since this is getting pretty long I'm going to split it into two parts, but there is plenty more interesting food stuff where this came from! I have the rest of the North Hall to cover and then I'll go back and finish Day 1 Part 2!

Check out my other Summer Fancy Food Show Coverage Posts! 

Day One, Level 1 (Part 1) 

Day Two (Electric Boogaloo), Level 3

Day 3! (Eat Hard: With a Vengeance Part 1)    (Part 2)