Clara Park is the Corporate Chef of Culinary Innovation for Chelten House Gourmet Products. She attended the Institute of Culinary Education in NYC and has cooked at prestigious restaurants in San Francisco, Napa Valley, Philadelphia, New York City, and Loire Valley, France. She also worked with Barbara Kafka to write The Intolerant Gourmet: Glorious Food with Gluten or Lactose, penned hundreds of restaurant reviews and chef interviews, and developed recipes for Campbell’s Soup, Swanson, Tabasco, and upwave.com.
Park recently sat down with Specialty Food News and spoke about the upcoming 2019 Summer Fancy Food Show and the role of innovation in the kitchen.
What are you most looking forward to at the Summer Fancy Food Show?
Seeing all the new ideas, products, and innovations. And of course, getting to taste them all as well.
What trends do you expect to see at the show?
I expect to see lots of CBD stuff, premium quality ingredients applied to more mainstream food items, specialized diet stuff, alternative ways to get a buzz, and heat/spice, lots of it.
How do you work with farms to ensure you source the freshest ingredients?
We have decades long relationships with farms and our farmers and a proven track record of being a good partner so there is a symbiosis at work. The farms trust us to be kind, fair, and professional and we trust them to be these things as they provide the freshest and best possible ingredients for us.
What role do innovation and experimentation play in your work?
They play a huge role. I was not a corporate chef but had a fine dining background and classical culinary training. My company was looking for someone who could think outside the corporate box and bring true innovation to their culinary department. I experiment with and research food trends, ingredients, recipes, culinary cultural practices, and techniques every single day. I joke that I get paid to play with food, but it’s really pretty accurate.
What’s the best business advice you’ve been given?
Take the meeting. You never know what doors may open for you from it.
The Specialty Food Association 2019 Summer Fancy Food Show takes place June 23-25, 2019 at the Javits Center in New York City. Click here to register now.
from Specialty Food News http://bit.ly/2ZSFOEy
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