Fancy Food Show highlights

Hot dogs made from wagyu ("Kobe") beef, coffee berry juice, spicy Thai-flavored shortbread -- must be the Fancy Food Show.

There's no way any one person could taste 5 percent of the foods offered at last week's show, a three-day extravaganza at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It's a foodie paradise, even if it is a little heavy on cheese and chocolates. But still -- you walk by a huge table offering hundreds of different cheeses, any of which you can just stick a knife into and sample. If only you could bring some home!

I started off looking specifically for wine-related food products, such as the fine savory cheddar shortbreads from Canada. (I don't actually recommend the spicy Thai, but the rosemary was nice.) That's how I found the Iron Chef wine. Irrashaimase!

Ahem. An interesting product for wine lovers was BBQ Bath, a brine concentrate from Texas that's used to marinate meat before grilling. It adds flavor and allows you to skip the barbecue sauce, a good thing because most BBQ sauces are wine-unfriendly (vinegary, spicy, sweet -- all problems.) I liked the Lime Jalapeno and Smoked Habanero flavors.

And about that "Kobe" beef hot dog -- yum! It's from Snake River Farms in Idaho, which raises the same breed of cattle, Wagyu, used in Japan to make Kobe beef. They also raise a breed of Japanese pig, Kurobuta, but I wasn't as impressed with the ham made from it.

But with so many great (and not-so-great) food products to sample, I soon lost my focus, instead just nibbling at things that looked yummy.

A few more goodies: green chile stew mix from New Mexico, coffee and Earl Grey flavored shortbread from Washington, juice made from coffee plant berries from Los Angeles. I loved these traditional Greek olive oil cookies sweetened with orange juice and this Bulgarian rose nectar drink.

I couldn't eat anywhere near enough chocolates to tell you which was best, but two I enjoyed for very different reasons were Valerie salt and pepper truffles and DeFranco's espresso secrets.

A few other tidbits of knowledge: Olives vary tremendously by quality. If you don't love the brand you use now, move on. I had sooooo much prosciutto and it varied from great to really great.

And a note to show promoters: If you're peddling a wine-friendly product, take care about the wine you pour. Some guy was trying to sell savory cookies that supposedly go with different specific varietals. I asked to try the one that goes with Cabernet, and he poured me Charles Shaw Cabernet. Mmm, delicious -- not. That's why there's no link here to his product.

Sorry for the delay in posting this. Wine rocks, but my home computer does not :(.