(By: Sandy Eller)

One glance at the river of lavender and yellow balloons cascading down the railings at Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus and you knew right away that Kosherpalooza, the first-ever kosher food show to focus exclusively on consumers, was definitely going to be quite the matzav.

“Let’s get this party started,” announced one brightly colored door sign.

“Eeeek! You made it!” chirped another.

A joint collaboration of Powwow Events and Fleishigs Magazine, Kosherpalooza was the ultimate place to be on June 28th. By the time the show officially kicked off at 10 AM, a line of enthusiastic foodies had already queued up ready to start tasting, even if some of the exhibitors had yet to make their way to their booths. One of the first thoughts that came to my head as I entered Kosherpalooza was that the shows aisles were surprisingly wide, but it didn’t take long for them to fill with people near some of the more popular booths, with attendees reveling at the opportunity to mingle with their favorite influencers, food bloggers, cookbook authors and other culinary celebs.

The general public’s fascination with the kosher food world is something that is readily evident to Shlomo and Shifra Klein, chief operating officer and editor in chief, respectively, of Fleishigs magazine, whose clever tag line reads: “We’re a well done medium.”

“Over the last few years, people have seen the different events and they have been asking for something like this,” Shlomo Klein told Yeshiva World News. “There hasn’t been anything like this for consumers and we decided ‘this is the time – let’s do it.’”

Explaining that the show came together in record time, Shifra Klein admitted that putting together an entire event from start to finish in less than three months had been more than a little intense.

“The whole point of Fleishigs is to bring everyone who is kosher together through the magazine,” said Shifra Klein. “It’s amazing to look around at the mix of people that are here, and yet everyone is similar in that we all keep kosher and we all celebrate kosher.”

Over 3,000 tickets were purchased for Kosherpalooza, which featured approximately 115 booths, with participants flocking to the show from as far away as California, Florida and Canada. While the show may have had fewer vendors than some of its predecessors, there was plenty to do besides sampling Haus of Babka’s Ferrero Rocher babka sticks, Pure Food by Estee’s dairy free milk chocolate chips and Mehadrin Ice Cream’s maple bourbon infused sorbet cups, with concurrent presentations going on throughout the day.

“Right now, we have Josh Boshnack breaking down a side of lamb, while Faigy Murray is frying sweet potato chips and Rochie Pinson is demonstrating challah braiding,” said Shifra Klein.

Ahava Productions’ music kept the party vibe going all day long, even as Kosherpalooza’s packed lineup of shows, contests, demos, cookbook signings and panel discussions unfolded.

Participants had the ability to test their palates (and each other) with a hot sauce challenge and blind taste trials, while a wine glass challenge had visitors trying to roll up a swath of toilet tissue that was topped with a wine-glass, without spilling a single drop.

“These guys know how to throw a fun party,” said Great Kosher Restaurants’ Elan Kornblum. “It’s a great thing when you can get people together to network, connect and schmooze, and they did a fantastic job here today at Kosherpalooza.”

With my husband joining me at Kosherpalooza, I gave him the job of finding the best bite at the show, an honor he accorded unequivocally to Pelleh Farms’ duck-fat accented turkey shawarma. Made from turkey that is sent off to the deli area for preparation on the day it is shechted, the shawarma was popular with show-goers, and the booth’s staff seemed to be spending a good part of their day replenishing their shawarma display.

I saw the same situation repeating itself at the Plantraw, where Shmuel Chaim Rosenfeld was hard pressed to keep up with the demand for the one year old company’s cocoa-date truffles, tomato-onion chips and za’atar and onion almond seed crackers.

“People keep coming back because it’s all clean organic, gluten-free ingredients, with no additives, added sugars or artificial flavorings or colorings,” said Rosenfeld. “It’s a healthy taste that tastes good.”

While there isn’t enough money in the world to get me to taste gala, (or p’tcha or galareta or aspic or whatever you want to call it,) people lined up to taste Zischa Kompel’s traditional calves’ foot jelly. Having gotten rave reviews after cooking up a batch of his grandmother’s gala when he made a Choson Bereishis kiddush, Kompel suddenly found himself in the food business and the owner of Zischa’s Gala.

“People just keep ordering it every week,” said Kompel. “So far we have gotten amazing feedback here, even from people who never tasted it before and started liking it.”

With Kosherpalooza not even attempting to disguise itself as a business event, an undercurrent of fun permeated the air and no one had to pretend that they weren’t there for the samples and goodies. D’vash Organics took a walk on the cheeky side, their bags printed with the slogan “wanna date?”, while a member of the 7th Heaven Chocolate team donned a pair of white feathered angel wings. Generous take-homes included Jerky Joy’s jars of jerky and Twisty’s assortment of delicious baked goods that just so happen to be gluten free, packed in colorful pastel boxes and accompanied by swirly pastel pens that you had to twist to open. And it was hard not to admire the creativity of Bread and Batter’s tiny round cases that looked like miniature versions of their brightly colored French macarons and Pretzel Plate’s self-described “sweetest business cards” – sealed pouches of chocolate covered pretzels that can be customized with any logo.

But amid all of the food and the hype, there was an even larger element that defined Kosherpalooza. There was the attendee who went over to the Ahava Productions DJ to bring him a cold drink, a person who spent several hours filling in for an exhibitor who couldn’t make it to the show because her flight was cancelled, and as my husband told the guys at the Torah Anytime booth, “with all the great things on display here today, you’ve still got the best product in the room.” That same spirit was evident at ArtScroll, which was distributing laminated interlinear bentshers, drawing on the words of Rav Meir Zvi Bergman, rosh yeshiva of Bnei Brak’s Yeshivas Rashbi, at the June 4th Adirei HaTorah event in Philadelphia.

“He quoted his father in law, Rav Shach, who emphasized the importance of reading bentshing, instead of saying it by heart, as a segula for shidduchim,” said ArtScroll’s Aryeh Morrison. “We are here today giving out free bentshers so that people can do this segula which will hopefully bring them shidduchim.”

Just hours after Kosherpalooza wrapped, the question that was on show-goers minds as they made their respective ways back home was already being answered.

“Yes, there will definitely be a Kosherpalooza 2024,” said Shlomo Klein, adding, “Location and date to be determined.”

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