This year, for the first time since 1994, the 33rd annual winter Fancy Food Show came to San Diego, occupying the belly of the Convention Center for four days. Normally, the show is held in San Francisco, but this year there was a scheduling conflict at Moscone Center, so we got it — over the passionate protests of the many exhibitors who’d rather go to Frisco. What’s the Fancy Food Show? It’s the Godzilla and King Kong of the food trade rolled into one mighty megillah. Staged by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, its purpose is to let companies that create and/or produce culinary specialties (or gourmet goodies, if you prefer) display and try to sell them to wholesalers and retailers who’ll eventually sell them to us eaters. And yes, they let ink-stained wretches in, too, to report on it. In short, it’s the edible version of Macworld, but instead of hordes of young geeks, it draws hordes of sweet old dears who run little gourmet food shoppes in places where the only possible source of a decent olive oil or imported cheese is — the little gourmet food shoppe.

To get in, you have to be in the food trade, or the media, or know somebody in the food trade who’s willing to take you or to lie that you work for him or her. (I don’t think they’re totally strict about credentials — I saw a few little kids with their parents. Sons of the nephew of the uncle in the food trade?) Anyone who attends gets to wander endlessly through the aisles of the Convention Center, never seeing daylight, tasting lots of sample goodies, and eventually turning green around the gills, since almost all the food is “special” by virtue of being intensely sweet, salty, or spicy. (There are few vegetable samples, and very few meat samples, and the caviar vendors give no samples at all.) There are no resting points for the palate, except at the occasional water stations and the bottled mineral-water exhibits.

Fortunately, there are occasional resting points for the body, in the form of double-sided miniature park benches that seat two per side, stationed in the transverse center aisle. As the afternoon latens and thousands of tootsies simultaneously tire, friendly competition for seating can grow intense, occasionally leading to accidental backward-lap-dances as two or more unheavenly bodies attempt to violate the laws of physics by claiming the same space at the same time.

For reasons never explained, you’re not allowed to take any samples out of the hall — they even have security guards at the exits, instructed to search your purse or clothing if you fit the profile of a desperado sample-smuggler. Nowadays, I guess that would be somebody wearing a turban (filled with chocolates?), a burka (“Are you hiding melons under there?”), or a backpack. Of course, wise guys like me can always find ways to sneak a little stuff past the doorway guardians. (Not “Deep Throat” but “Deep Pockets.”) Besides, the staff here seemed more laid-back than the ones up north. (The latter have probably moved on to more serious national security occupations by now, e.g., doing their bit at SFO to keep terrorist toenail clippers off your flight to Podunk International.) But the stern sanction against smuggling goodies goes kablooey during the final hours of the last day of the show anyway, when exhibitors will do anything to ditch their leftovers rather than ship or schlep them all home again. Unfortunately, I missed that day, still soaking my feet from the previous day’s foray.

The last time I went to the show was about ten years ago, covering it for a free weekly in San Francisco, trying to pick up on the candidates for the latest and hottest trends. The food shows of the ’90s took place in an era of food fads rapidly dancing do-si-dos, and the show seemed a Parliament of Dunces, desperate attempts to capture attention for the latest and greatest dumb ideas. There were a lot of truly horrible foods. The chocolate-covered popcorn nightmare, for one, along with its cousin, wasabi popcorn. The evil marinades to wreck any meat. Hot sauce after hot sauce — back then, that was the year’s major fad, bringing many new products named as painful-anal jokes (e.g., “Ass Kicking” and “Ring of Fire” brands). There was no “natural/organic” section, as the current food show featured. Instead, there were “health foods” — breads and crackers and pastries evidently made from low-carb, fat-free, gluten-free, flavor-free tree bark. These were truly magical foods: one small bite would react instantly with human saliva to expand into a mouthful of damp sawdust. (But there were some goodies, too — Aidells sausages, Thai Kitchen curry pastes, the “O” line of citrus-infused olive oils, Walkerswood jerk marinade, L’Estornell’s rich Spanish olive oil — products that are still staples of my pantry.)

In those days, I’d write up the show as a humor piece. But this time, I come to praise Caesar, not to bury him in satire. (Well, maybe a little. Need some tartness to go with the sweet.) I was shocked (and pleased) at the leap in quality. This year, the prized central aisles of the Convention Center, where you’re most likely to enter the hall, were occupied by a huge grouping under the banner “Natural/Organic.” That’s where I concentrated my travels — partly by personal preference, and partly because natural/organic foods dominated another category of the directory: “What’s New and What’s Hot.” Yes, there were a few little nasties under this rubric — some ineffably bland frozen “cocktail samosas” from India, and a vegan cheesecake that tasted like what it was — tofu swamped with vanilla. But mostly, these aisles yielded pleasures.

About a third of the organics consisted of sweets of one form or another, and riding high above them all was the hottest new ingredient: Acai (pronounced “a sigh”), extracted from purple berries from a palm that grows in the Brazilian Amazon, is reputedly anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antioxidant, and antimutagenic, not to mention an energy-boosting cure-all — a new miracle food/drug in a bright-tasting sweet-tart package. (I mean, by now pomegranate is so 1999!) There were juices, purées, smoothies, sorbets, and gelati made with it, and they all tasted good, and sometimes splendid. (They were the closest foods at the show to providing mouth-relief after bites of exotic chips and stinging salsas.) One of my favorite uses was from Dagoba, a famous and fine purveyor of organic chocolate, which offers a dark-chocolate bar called Superfruit, filled with acai partnered with goji berries, another upcoming miracle food. Goji berries (aka wolfberries, widely used in Chinese medicine) look to become the acai of 2012, after North Americans have gobbled up and extincted all the acai in Brazil in hopes of obtaining eternal life and youth. Where to get acai products locally? Right now, Whole Foods has the widest variety — several company reps mentioned it as a local source for their products — but at least one large acai wholesaler has products (such as juice) at local Vons, Albertsons, and Ralphs.

Organic booze and mixers furnished unexpected treats. Papagayo, a Paraguayan white rum made from organic sugar cane, was amazingly smooth, intense, and rich, with none of those nasty industrial-aldehyde aftertastes you often find in commercial white rum. I loved it served neat with ice and a little lime wedge, and I know it’d make an outstanding caipirinha, probably even tastier than authentic Brazilian cachaça (a sugarcane liquor similar to rum). Samurai Jim was quite taken with the same distributor’s suave organic seven-year aged Scotch, Highland Harvest. The same line includes U.K.5 organic vodka and Juniper Green organic London dry gin. I probably should have tasted the vodka (although it’s far from my favorite type of hooch) to experience a bit of family history: My great-grandmother, as a young, suddenly impoverished widow in Sandomir, Poland, turned her potato patch into organic vodka — which my five-year-old grandma, the moonshine-runner, delivered to the customers. (A chorus of “Thunder Road,” please.)

The line of organic firewater is available, said the courtly British representative of the brand, at BevMo (the rum running about $25 a bottle, and to my tastes well worth it). I also liked Tommy’s margarita mix — light and bright, mainly fresh lime juice blended with organic agave nectar and a bit of organic cane sugar — a far cry from the sugary, carb-loaded Cuervo and Sauza mixes. BevMo carries that, too, and if you live from La Jolla on north, you might even find the mix in the refrigerators of your serious local groceries.

After falling into near-swoons over the Prosecco with rosewater cocktail at Bite, Jim and I were both easy pushovers for Sence rose nectar, the essence of rose fragrance with a little sweetness. No local source yet, but if you want it, check sencenectar.com about purchasing.

I practically jumped up and cheered when I saw the display from Organic Prairie — and tasted the little sample piece of meltingly tender pork tenderloin they provided. This is the meat side of a familiar dairy brand, Organic Valley, which makes some of the best packaged cheeses I’ve ever tasted. They’re quite large for an organic brand, but from all I’ve read, they still do it right. Like Niman Meats, they’re an independent co-op of small family farms and ranches. Their display at the food show included a refrigerator meat case of gorgeous packaged meats, all pasture-raised, organic, and humanely treated. I lusted for the dark-red, well-marbled, grass-fed porterhouse I saw in that case. Whole Foods seems to be the most available local source for this brand.

Less easily available are some of the new low-carb foods. (Alas, the mainstream unnatural brands gobbled up the low-carb market as quickly as they could, with lines like South Beach frozen foods — still full of the usual polysyllabic products of the chemical factories.) The line I’d most like to see at local groceries is called Doctor Grandma’s Whole Grain Foods, specializing in organic whole-wheat products, made with extra-virgin olive oil where appropriate. The line was designed for diabetics, but it hits the spot for any low-carb dieter, or even those just hoping to eat more conscientiously.

Among other things, Doctor Grandma’s makes a pancake mix and a muffin mix, both sweetened with a no-cal, no-carb sugar substitute that I’ll talk about in a minute. The sample pancake amazed me. It had a good grain flavor and was as light as mainstream brands, nothing like the heavy-handed “good for you” tree-bark pastries of a decade ago. But the product I want, need, and love from this food line is their sugar substitute, made from fruit. It didn’t taste like Splenda, with the latter’s metallic-tasting chemical undertones, or like any of the other monstrous chemical fake sugars. Concentrating hard as I swallowed a quarter-teaspoonful, I discerned no aftertaste at all. A bit mellower and gentler than commercial white sugar, it reminded me of azucar moreno, the Mexican granulated light-brown cane sugar that I prefer to white sugar for most uses. Until some smart local retailer picks up this fine line of foodstuffs, you can order the products online from DoctorGrandmas.com. By the way, I am actually about to put my money where my mouth is and buy the fake sugar and the real pancake mix, and they haven’t even bribed me or anything — their reps at the show never even heard of the Reader.

Another group of products I’d like to try again are Larabar’s raw candy bars made from unsweetened fruit purées, nuts, and spices, with nothing else added. Since dates are the basis of most of the bars, the flavors tilt Middle Eastern. They’re not super-sweet, but they’re pleasing. No local distributor, but you can check into them at larabar.com.

One of the items I smuggled home was a can of sparkling organic energy drink in the interesting-sounding flavor of pomegranate-limeflower. I picked up the can thinking to drink it there, since I badly needed an energy boost and was thirsty anyway, until I read the nutritional information and discovered the whopping 37 grams of carbohydrates — “energy” from cane sugar, the first listed ingredient, plus guarana and green tea (both abounding in caffeine), plus added vitamins. That’s not health food, that’s the equivalent of a Jolt cola, just with a more exotic table of contents. I’ve been doling out its use as a breakfast drink over three days. The taste is less spectacular than I imagined. The lesson here is, an “organic” label is no automatic guarantee of quality or sincerity.

Outside of the “natural” aisles, most of the show was arranged by geographical source. (There were, for instance, miles and miles of Italy, featuring olive oils, cheeses, and pastas ad infinitum.) They might have had a special Stupid Food aisle somewhere at one of the ends, but I saw very few foods of blatant screaming idiocy. Quite the opposite: somewhere in Spain, I got my very first taste of the legendary Iberian ham made from hogs fed on chestnuts. (It was wonderful, indeed.)

Oddly enough, it was in Texas territory where I lucked into a charming display of divine British puddings, presided over by an equally charming lady. Not all sweets from Austin’s Sticky Toffee Pudding Company are sticky, if that’s what scares you about British desserts. Owner Tracy Claros (the baker and boss, born in England’s Lake Country) furnished sample bites of the airiest, most sensual English lemon pudding you can imagine — handmade from ingredients as pure as any food on the natural aisles. No surprise then that when the show was over, the lemon pudding took the prize in the competition for “Outstanding Baked Good.” Visiting the website, I discovered that Marian Burros of the New York Times had also fallen in love with these sweets, which can be served heated or at room temperature, with ice cream if you like. You can buy a six-pack of any of several puddings (or a sampler pack) for $30 (plus refrigerated shipping) from stickytoffeepuddingcompany.com. No local grocery is carrying them.

Even though I didn’t open the smuggled can of energy drink until the next day, something else I ate in the long afternoon of nibbling and sampling had an undisclosed “energy” component. I crashed at midnight (after a simple supper with no “energy food” in it), then awoke every half hour until morning, as though I’d downed a triple espresso at bedtime. Acai? Goji berries? Whatever, I had evidently OD’d on something natural/organic — that is, loaded with organic, natural, plant-based, pure caffeine.