Top 10 trends at the San Francisco Winter Fancy Food Show

Cheese by the truckload, salumi by the boatload — San Francisco’s annual Winter Fancy Food Show is a glutton’s paradise. More than 1,400 food purveyors from around the world attended this year’s specialty food trade show, which runs Jan. 22-24 at Moscone Center, offering up tastes and samples of every conceivable thing in the hopes that their products might end up in a restaurant or grocery store near you. We tasted and sipped our way through this gourmet extravaganza to discover what’s hot and trending. Here’s what we found:

1. Beet it: Beets are the “it” vegetable this year. We saw beets dried, pickled and showcased in bright red chips, salsas, snack bars and juices.
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   Boozy food: Everywhere we turned, alcohol and cocktail flavors were blended into unexpected fare, from whiskey sour pickles and spicy bloody mary cashews to bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup, wine-flavored biscotti and cabernet-infused oak smoking cubes for the barbecue. San Francisco-based Regrained’s is reclaiming leftover brewing grains to crafts beer-centric snack bars, such as Honey Almond IPA and Chocolate Coffee Stout. ($2.50/bar; www.regrained.com)
3. Brazilian cheese balls: This gluten-free, tapioca-based cheese puff is all the rage in Brazil, where it’s enjoyed with espresso throughout the day. Fresno P*DE*Q founder — and native Brazilian — Flavia Takahashi-Flores missed the savory snacks. She’s just debuted frozen Brazil Balls in parmesan-cheddar and other flavors, including chocolate. ($7/14 ounce bag; www.pdeq.net)
4. Chocolate seaweed: These are two flavors we never thought we’d see together, yet somehow it works. Burlingame’s Ocean’s Halo has created thin snack wafers by sandwiching a paste of roasted chocolate-almonds or coconut flakes between two seaweed sheets. The result is salty, sweet and savory. ($4/0.9 ounce bag; www.oceanshalo.com)
5. Emoji food: We use emojis to text, why not use them to express how we feel when we eat? Jelly Belly’s new Mixed Emotions jelly beans are available in happy, sad, playful, grumpy and love versions. “Emojis are a big part of how we communicate with each other,” says Jelly Belly’s Jana Sanders Perry. “Two sads plus one grumpy might equal Monday, or a playful and a love might equal crush.” (www.jellybelly.com).

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1. Flour power: Say hello to banana, farro and coconut flours — and cauliflower, which is not only replacing rice, it’s the main ingredient in Chico-based Cali’flour Food’s Cauliflower Pizza Crusts ($15/2 crusts; www.califlourfoods.com).
2. Grown-up popsicles: These are not the pops you got from the Good Humor truck. Think hibiscus mint, watermelon agave and a reimagined orangesicle, plus St. George Spirits Single Malt from Bay Area-based Bar Gelato by Naia. ($3;  www.bargelato.com)
3. Hemped up: Cannabis edibles aside, hemp is popping up all over, even in drinkable form. San Leandro-based Hemp2o infuses TCA-free hemp seed oil extract into strawberry, pineapple-coconut and raspberry-lime juices, adding a nutty aftertaste and loads of B vitamins, omegas and vitamin C. ($3; www.hemp2o.com)
4. Matcha ado: This green Japanese tea powder is being whisked up into hot and cold frothy drinks. We spotted it as a kombucha ingredients, as well as a flavorful addition to baked goods and sea salts.
5. Hatched: This will come as no surprise to New Mexico residents, but Hatch chiles are the new stars of the pepper world, popping up in salsas, sausages, dips and chips.