Kosherpalooza Food Festival Attracts Thousands With Live Demos and Competitions: ‘Doesn’t Get Bigger Than This’
by Shiryn Ghermezian
The scene at Kosherpalooza on June 28, 2023. Photo: Shmily Treger.
More than 100 vendors and a crowd of nearly 4,000 people descended on a suburban New Jersey town on Wednesday for a massive, first-of-its-kind interactive kosher food festival.
“We ran out of 1,000 tacos in three and a half hours. It was crazy,” Faygie Fisher, co-owner of New Jersey’s Lamppost Bistro Bar & Lounge, told The Algemeiner while speaking about the turnout at Kosherpalooza. “And we thought we brought too many!”
Fisher, one of 125 food and beverage vendors to showcase their products for thousands of excited — and hungry — consumers, explained that people began grabbing food before her team “could even catch our breath.”
Other exhibitors who showed up to the all-day event at the Meadowlands Expo Center in Seacaucus, New Jersey, included Reisman’s, Rambam, Tuscanini, Mixcraft, Cream Gelateria, The Cheese Guy, and Haus of Babka, among many others. Guests were also able to try sourdough pizza from Brooklyn Bagel, sushi from Eden Wok, beef tartare from Sol Dining, gnocchi tossed in tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese from Tuscanini and even alcohol-infused sorbet from Mehadrin.
However, what organizers said sets Kosherpalooza apart from other kosher food exhibitions were its numerous offerings beyond food tastings — such as 14 live food demonstrations, cooking and bartending competitions, six panel discussions and interactive games. Attendees could compete in a hot sauce challenge to see how much heat they can handle, a wine glass challenge and a blind taste test to see how refined their palates are.
Kosher cookbook author Chani Apfelbaum hosted a cooking contest similar to the Food Network competitive cooking competition Chopped, where three chefs are asked to make a dish with a mystery basket of ingredients that are only revealed to them right before the timed contest starts. The mystery basket in Wednesday’s competition included bison rib steaks, lemon sorbetto, graham crackers and watermelon rind.
During a panel discussion about the kosher wine industry — Gabriel Geller a kosher wine critic, wine education manager of Royal Wine Corp and co-founder of the Kosher Food and Wine Experience — said 4,000-4,500 different types of kosher wines are produced every year versus only a dozen 40 years ago.
“In the last five years, the growth in the consumer interest in kosher wine has grown exponentially,” added Yossie Horwitz, a kosher wine educator and author of the popular weekly email newsletter Yossie’s Corkboard. “Wine has become mainstream, for lack of a better word. Kosher wine has become an interest to the regular kosher consumers [who are] much more interested in wine than they were five years ago.”
The event comes at a time of significant growth for the kosher food industry. The global kosher foods market is projected to be valued at $42.64 billion this year and skyrocket to a striking $78.55 billion by 2033 at an annual growth rate of over 6 percent, according to Future Market Insights. One reason for such rapid growth is that kosher foods and beverages, which are produced in accordance with Jewish dietary regulations, are becoming increasingly popular among non-Jewish communities.
And if Kosherpalooza is any indication, that popularity is poised to continue growing.
The Algemeiner spoke with vendors who said Kosherpalozza was a perfect chance for them to connect and interact directly with those who buy their products, as well as consumers who said they enjoyed the opportunity to learn — and, of course, to eat.
According to the organizers of Kosherpalooza, which was hosted by Fleishigs magazine and Powwow Events, that was precisely the point.
“At Fleishigs we are all about making kosher fun and exciting,” the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Shifra Klein told The Algemeiner. “This show was the next step [in] actually bringing Fleishigs to the people, and we are so happy with the way the show turned out and the overwhelming positive response.”
However, not everyone was expecting such a large turnout.
“I’ve been to many food shows. I walked in this morning and I expected 500 people throughout the day, and I saw 500 people before I made it to my booth. This has been insane,” said Shloimy Leitner of Spice and Zest, a company that helps people learn to bake sourdough bread. “This is the biggest kosher food show that I’ve ever been to, and also the most vibrant and exciting … [Kosherpalooza] gives us the opportunity to speak to the people who use our products and who buy our products.”
Leitner added that hearing from consumers presents an opportunity to learn from them in order to innovate for the future.
Ben Berlin, a sales manager for Tuscanini, said about consumers: “they are the real backbone of our business. They’re our bosses, the ones who pay the bill.” He added that while Tuscanini has attended several trade shows, “in the kosher world, it doesn’t get much bigger than this.”
