Culinary Adventures with Chef Luiz
(Chef Silverio Luiz Tecedor is a chef consultant for IDF, who has spent the past 40+
years cooking and traveling around the world. Through the years, he typically flew
more than 100,000 miles annually, while cooking, teaching and learning about food
for CPC/Best Foods/Unilever. Here at IDF, we’re delighted that Chef Luiz has agreed
to share some of his global food-lore.)

A taste of FISA—Food Ingredients South America
Chef Luiz serves up his impressions

SAO PAULO, Brazil— This was my first visit to the South American Food Ingredients trade show, FISA, which is the most important food ingredients expo in Latin America. After a 10-hour flight from New York, I arrived in Sao Paulo. This city of over 20 million people seems to be growing every minute, everywhere you look there are new buildings going up.

As usual, the traffic was terrible. It took me two hours to get from the airport to the hotel, which is only about 15 miles. Because the traffic in the city is so bad, especially during normal rush hours, the show organizers did not schedule the opening of the show floor until 2 p.m. And with this later start time, the show floor was open until at 8 p.m. (unofficially though, it went to 10 p.m.).

The number of visitors at the show pleasantly surprised me. The show organizers reported record attendance for the event with slightly more than 10,000 attendees and 250 exhibitors. While there were many multinational exhibitors, including Cargill, Bunge, Gelita and Tate & Lyle, most of the exhibitors were Brazilian, such as Duas Rodas and Prativita.

IDF™ showed its products inside the booth of Prativita. We had visitors at the booth from Argentina, Chile, Peru and Colombia, including some of my old friends from Buenos Aires.

South American style
Oddly for me, there was very little sampling of new food ideas or concepts at the show. Instead the samples in booths were of finished food products being launched at the show or already in production.

What was really new for me though was that beer and whiskey was served in many booths. Not surprisingly this made people very happy. They spent long times at the booths talking with the exhibitors and having a good time, yet everybody was very professional and interested in getting deals done. The atmosphere of the show was very happy and friendly.

The Chinese had a very small pavilion. They are slowly but surely entering the South American market. I noticed the Chinese exhibitors seemed to be having lots of problem with Portuguese and instead were trying to do business in English. Latin America is undergoing a growth spurt—almost every country has low inflation (by local standards) and a robust economy. The middle class is also on the rise, especially in Chile, Peru and Brazil.

Until next time…

Tchau!

Chef Luiz