Gourmet News

Soom Foods Offers a Smoother Tahini

Published June 4, 2018

By Lorrie Baumann

Soom Foods really started with a question about why the tahini that Shelby Zitelman tasted in Israel was so much better than the tahini she’d tasted in the United States. Today, she and her two sisters are answering that question by bringing their own brand of tahini pressed and manufactured in Israel so that Americans can taste the difference for themselves.

Soom Foods offers two products to the American market. Its Tahini is the traditional paste made from roasted and pressed sesame seeds that’s one of the main ingredients in traditional hummus. Its Chocolate Tahini is a direct competitor with spreads made with cocoa and nut butter.

Zitelman is the oldest of three sisters, and she had the chance to taste the tahini that Israelis were eating when she went to Israel to visit her middle sister, who was living in Israel and dating a man who sold tahini. He introduced the product to her. “I had never had tahini quite like this,” she said. “I wanted to know why it was so good and why it tasted like peanut butter.”

She discovered that the tahini she was enjoying was made from a particular variety of white sesame seed grown in Ethiopia and processed in Israel. “Like coffee, the seeds can have a very different effect depending on the varietal,” she said. These particular seeds could be ground into a very smooth paste with no bitter flavor.

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Their two products are made and packaged in Israel from sesame sourced in Ethiopia. The tahini is then shipped from Israel to the U.S., where the company is headquartered in North Philadelphia. Soom Foods Tahini is sold in 11-ounce jars that retail for $6.99. As well as its use as a primary ingredient in hummus, it’s also used in marinades and in salad dressings. “It’s also appearing in baked goods as an alternative to nut butters,” Zitelman said. “Anywhere you’d see almond butter or peanut butter, you could consider tahini instead.”

That’s particularly true because sesame is both a drought-resistant crop that uses less water than almonds, and one of the best non-animal sources of protein, calcium and iron, she added. “In this world of being very sensitive to nut allergies, it can be a wonderful substitute for nut butters for allergy purposes as well as for flavor purposes.”

Soom Foods Chocolate Tahini is sold in a 12-ounce jar that retails for $8.99. Dairy-free, nut-free and with no added oils, it also has half the sugar of competing nut butter-chocolate spreads, according to Zitelman. “That’s a big selling point, especially for families with young kids and those who are concerned with sugar intake,” she said.

For more information, visit www.soomfoods.com.

Lantana Foods Delivers Hummus for Breakfast

Published June 4, 2018

By Lorrie Baumann

With its first hummus launched in just 2011, Lantana Hummus has become one of the top brands in the category by turning the whole definition of the product on its head.

Everyone knows what hummus is, but for those who need a dictionary definition, Merriam-Webster provides one. By that definition, hummus is “a paste of pureed chickpeas usually mixed with sesame oil or sesame paste and eaten as a dip or sandwich spread.”

To which, the three foodie friends who founded Lantana Hummus, all with a background of working for some of the larger producers in the space, said something like, “A pulse is a pulse. A bean is a bean,” according to Matt Gase, CEO of Lantana Foods since 2016. “What’s sacred about the garbanzo bean? … Let’s create something that is culinary, something that is fun and bright and flavorful.”

And from that thought, they created a line of hummus that uses beans other than chickpeas, and they exercised culinary ingenuity on additions of vegetables and toppings. “Every one of their SKUs is like its own creation — it’s not just the same hummus coming off the line with a different topping on it,” Gase said.

The result is a range of eight wildly inventive creations that offer bright colors, bold flavors and certifications that appeal to health-conscious consumers. Sriracha Carrot is a top seller that offers the color and sweetness of carrots and the zing of sriracha in a white bean hummus that’s topped with sunflower seeds and dried apricots. White Bean Hummus has a topping of pine nuts and herbs, and Cucumber is a hummus made from white beans and edamame and topped with cucumber and dill.
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The three newest flavors, launching this year, are Hatch Chile, Cauliflower, and Strawberry. They each start with a white bean hummus base. Hatch Chile is made with New Mexico Hatch chiles and topped with diced green chiles. The Cauliflower Hummus offers cauliflower blended in the hummus and pickled carrots, cauliflower bits and caramelized onions as a topping.

That brings us to Strawberry, which was born out of market intelligence that informed its creators that consumers were using Lantana’s Black Bean Hummus as an ingredient in breakfast burritos. If consumers want to eat hummus for breakfast, why would it have to be savory? “We’d had such success introducing vegetables into our hummus, why not fruit? Can we pull it off?” Gase explained the thinking.

The result is a Strawberry Hummus, with some basil for an herbal counterbalance to the sweetness and a topping of strawberries, basil and balsamic vinegar. The company’s market research says that consumers are interested in using it as a replacement for cream cheese. “We’ve had feedback that people are replacing jelly in a peanut butter and hummus sandwich — sort of a protein bomb there,” Gase said.

Following the success of Strawberry, Lantana Hummus is rolling out other fruit-forward hummus concoctions with white bean bases this summer, with their launch at the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association show in June. Blueberry hummus is made with white bean hummus topped with hibiscus, mint and dried blueberries. Cherry has sweet cherries and a topping of sweet and smoked cherries and sunflower seeds. Mango includes cilantro in the base and a topping of chile lime mango and pineapple.

All of the Lantana Hummus products are gluten free and vegan friendly, and most are non-GMO. The 10-ounce tubs retails for around $4.49. For more information, visit www.lantanafoods.com.

Ice Cream as Performance Art: Humphry Slocombe

Published June 4, 2018

By Lorrie Baumann

The best ice cream tasted by this year’s sofi™ Award judges was Humphry Slocombe’s Black Sesame. It’s one of a dizzying array of flavors offered by San Francisco, California, entrepreneurs Jake Godby and Sean Vahey, co-Founders of Humphry Slocombe. Godby, a pastry chef by training, is also the company’s Chef, while Vahey, who has a background in food and beverage management, also serves as its Marketing Director.

The Black Sesame flavor includes toasted black sesame seeds with sesame oil added to amp up the flavor even more. The rest of the current lineup includes flavors like POG Sorbet, which combines passion fruit, orange and guava in a nondairy sorbet; Matchadoodle, an ice cream made with green tea from Kyoto and snickerdoodle cookies made in-house; Blueberry Boy Bait, which offers brown sugar streusel stirred into a blueberry ice cream and Dirty Chai, a chai ice cream with espresso in it. The adult-oriented flavors were Godby’s idea, Vahey says. “We didn’t necessarily pigeonhole it as ice cream for adults,” he said. “We just happen to have adult tastes.”

“I just don’t know how to do anything else,” Godby adds. “The ice cream that we make is to my taste. I just didn’t see the reason to duplicate what other people were already doing very well. We were very fortunate that there was a market for what we were making, but we were going to make what we do either way.”

The two originally founded their business in December of 2008 with the thought that what they were starting was going to be just a quirky little ice cream shop in San Francisco’s Mission District. “We’re just being ourselves. We’re lucky that people liked us. This was not test-marketed,” Godby says. “We had no clue that it would blow up the way it did. And it did — it blew up hot.”

It took the business partners two years of wading through bureaucracy and working with contractors to get their doors open, and on their opening day, there was still a sawhorse in their lobby, and Vahey was sweeping up sawdust off the floor. “Most ice cream stores are pink and they’re soft and they’re cute. We are not cute,” Vahey says. “There’s nothing about Jake or I that’s cute or adorable. We’re intense and in-your-face, just like the ice cream. When you came into our shop, you had an experience.”
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Vahey and Godby had eight flavors of ice creams in the case in those days, and they were rotating flavors every day. Customers could sample any or all of the flavors before committing to a whole scoop. “Every ice cream had a story, and that wasn’t happening anywhere,” Vahey says. “We were bringing you into our world.”

“We couldn’t keep up with the demand; the lines were getting longer and longer,” Godby adds.

One of the proprietors’ first surprises was their customer’s apparent fondness for strawberries. Their culinary approach to ice cream required fresh ingredients and seasonal flavors, and their customers were asking for strawberry ice cream in the dead of winter, when there were no strawberries to be found. Finally, when spring came around and strawberries came onto the market, Godby made the ice cream that so many had been requesting, and he called it Here’s Your Damn Strawberry, which is the name by which the flavor is known today at Humphry Slocombe.

The pair didn’t have any marketing budget, but social media was just getting under way, so they made the most of it with posts that created a sensory experience. “We were going to put our faces and our voices into our marketing,” Godby says. We were doing tons of image-heavy ice cream and food porn, and that resonated with a lot of people.”

Today, the packaging for their retail pints reflects that same desire to bring customers into the world of Humphry Slocombe. Packages include a little of Godby and Vahey’s story, and there’s a quote on every carton. “It’s about staying true to ourselves. …You’re still getting that experience. It doesn’t get lost in translation,” Vahey says. “Of course it’s super fun to come into our store, but we want you to have that when you pick up a pint of our ice cream too. At the end of the day, it’s about the ice cream. It’s a unique high quality ice cream that we want you to remember.”