Top Ten Favourite Fun Foods From the World Travel Market: Chocolates, Locusts and more

Chocolates, chocolates, chocolates  chocolates galore, make your own chocolates, delicious chocolates, locusts, banana custard cakes and more. Mango jerky. Tomato paste from Malta. Chocolate coins from the Mint museum.

Let's start with chocolates.

1 Create Your Own Chocolate
At the World Travel Market I tried making my own choice of chocolate outside, filling cream and crunchy bits. I chose white chocolate case, ginger filling and nut topping. Delicious. What a wonderful tour you can organise if you ever go to Brussels in Belgium. Just the thing for a bridal party, hen night., honeymoon, anniversary celebratory break, surprise birthday, any excuse. Just for a holiday.They do wine and chocolate or beer and chocolate.
From www.conceptchocolate.eu
Brussels, Belgium

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More Belgian Chocolates

chocolate story, Brussels, Belgium.

3 Locusts on the South Africa stand

Crunchy, crispy. All I got was the bits of legs and wings at the bottom of the pot. Everybody else was so keen to try them that by mid-afternoon they had all gone.  The person on the stand said he thought nobody would want to try them so the organisers didn't bring many and the supply soon ran out. If locusts are that popular they must be just the thing for a party. 

I was so intrigued I took the empty pot home and now I'm looking at it - oh no!

The pot says locusts are crustaceans - and I'm allergic to shellfish. 

Just as well I only got a teeny taste. That much didn't affect me. 

What did I think locusts were? They fly. So they are birds? No. I thought they were flying insects.

Want to know more:

www.crunchycritters.com

I am glad I took the trouble to save the empty pot. Look what I learned. Country of origin: Netherlands. Crunchy Critters - The Old Post Office DE21 6PF - United Kingdom.

4 (Beef) Jerky flavours including  mango

The stand had several flavours of jerky. Mango jerky. Beef Jerky. I had herd of beef jerky. I love dried mango. Surely it was dried mango? Not stringy like jerky. I had not heard of mango jerky. Another new experience. Another idea for 'the man who has everything'.

5  Tokyo Banana - Banana puree filling in cake

Bananas filling in cake, made in Japan, but offered to me on a stand for the 'number one travel company in Korean for the past 15 years.' A tour company called HanaTour. I thought they only ran tours to Korea. But now I am reading their brochure I see they organise tours in Korea, China, Japan - world Heritage tour from Tokyo to Hiroshima for 16 days, Thailand and more. They gave me a delicious Tokyo banana pastry and a selfie stick. 

I already had a cheap selfie stick which I never used in another colour, but I accepted theirs politely. So glad I did. When I got home I discovered it had a remote device and instructions which made if feel very professional. I bet everything they organise is just so.
I love Japanese red bean filled, (yes, punning joke - been filled) doughnuts as well as chestnut and all the flavours of filled dumplings/donuts you get in Singapore and China. Now I've tried the banana-cream filled cake which comes shaped like a small banana sealed in a pristine see-through wrapper.

http://manager.hanatour.eu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Banana

6 Tomato Paste from Gozo island, Malta

Gozo is the small island of Malta. I went to the small island of Gozo from the big island on a day trip by ferry. Lovely place, such friendly people. At the World Travel Market I tried sun-dried tomato paste spread on bread. Dark red. Delicious, intense flavour.

7 Cream cheese filled crispy rolls

These look intriguing. I must admit I didn't like them at all. The outside is so hard I was afraid of breaking my teeth. I sucked out the cheap cheese. Thea reason I am including them is because I was so fascinated by the way they are not made by rolling the outside around the middle, like cheese blintzes (pancakes), but by inserting the cream  cheese by piping it in.

8 Mustard with ginger from Dijon

9 Chocolate coins for Christmas stockings from the Mint in Wales

I brought these home and puzzled over where I had obtained them. Then the conversation about mint chocolate came back to me. I was on a stand advertising the Royal Mint museum which will be opening in Wales near Cardiff in the spring of 2016. Next year - but we are already November at the World Travel Market so spring as the poem says cannot be far behind. I stood on the stand and said, 'Chocolates from the mint - they should be mint chocolates!'

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.