Earlier this May, I attended SIAL Canada, the biggest food and beverage tradeshow in Canada. A 240,000 square feet exhibition space filled with booths of food and drinks from around the world? Count me in!
SIAL Canada gives opportunities to businesses from around the world to showcase their products to individuals in the food and beverage industry in Canada. But, one of the biggest parts of SIAL this year was the EU Pavilion, which formed the centre piece of the fair. With the recent change between the EU and Canada through the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), things will definitely be more exciting in the near future in terms of having more access to European products in Canada! I, being a huge fan of Europe, am very excited about this.
As I toured around the 60 European booths at SIAL, I really got a chance to see and taste a number of food and beverage products from the EU. These booths consisted of companies from most of the EU member states, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
We chatted and learned about the number of products that could soon be finding their way to Canadian shelves. This could include fruit and vegetables, fresh and preserved meats, milk and dairy products and wines and spirits. I have a confession to make though - despite all the delicious vendors, I mainly stuck with the cured meats and cheeses... I wonder why hehe.
But besides eating around SIAL, there was also a cooking demo from a couple chefs from the city where they made a couple recipes using EU ingredients mixed in with Canadian, local ingredients! I will be posting two other blog posts about this in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for that!
#ENJOYitsfromEurope!
