From canned menudo to pickled mango in hot sauce, a food-industry trade show aimed at the Latino market has come to Houston for the first time. Roughly 300 vendors are hawking their wares at the Expo Comida Latina in the George R. Brown Convention Center, offering a snapshot of the new foods we can expect to see soon on supermarket shelves and chain-restaurant menus. The exhibition, expected to attract 3,000 industry people, ends today.

"It's a demographic that every consumer products company in America is trying to reach," said exhibitor Karen Tigert, marketing manager of Houston-based American Rice Inc.

That Latin market is worth $8 billion annually, said Expo organizer Brian Randall. And it's growing at warp speed. The expo was launched in Los Angeles in 2002. It expanded to New York City the following year and last year went to San Antonio. Randall said he expects it to remain in Houston.

The Houston show has a definite Mexican flavor and features about 30 Texas-based companies. The expo is being held in conjunction with the smaller Fiesta Latina, which showcases beverages.

"The U.S. palate is changing," Randall said. "If you look at aisles in the supermarket, the traditional ethnic aisles — I don't like that term — have expanded and expanded and expanded the taste buds in America. Expo Comida Latina reflects those changes."

He said the three major trends in the Hispanic food market are:

•Healthy food for young Hispanics. On offer at Expo Comida Latina were tofu quesadillas, an eight-grain tortilla and calcium-fortified punch.
On Monday Tomas Salado of House Foods America handed out samples of quesadillas made with the company's chile- and onion-flavored tofu and had plenty of takers.

Do Hispanics cook with tofu? "Not many. Not yet," Salado said. "That's why we are here."

•Top-of-the-line alcoholic beverages, including premium tequilas and mezcales from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which sent a government delegation to promote its products.
•Traditional Mexican products still largely unknown among Americans, including moles and Mexican chocolate.
Said Randall, "We've gone way beyond the refried-beans stage."

The show offers one-stop shopping for supermarket and restaurant buyers (the event is not open to the public).

Products such as salsas, guacamole, tortillas and canned jalapeños are so familiar it's almost hard to remember the U.S. pantry without them. Then there are the Latino products the average Anglo may have run across but wouldn't know exactly how to use: canned nopalitos, achiote and natural sugars such as panela and piloncillo, for instance.

Other items that might baffle the ordinary U.S. consumer include sour guava in hot sauce, barley mix powder and sodas in a rainbow of extraordinary flavors.

Distributors and manufacturers exhibiting at the expo said they hope to reach a dual market.

"We are catering to Hispanics now, and as you know it's a growing market," said Raul Escobedo, vice president of sales at Houston-based Cyclone Enterprises. "But also the Anglo market is always looking for the new recipe, the exotic dish, and we hope to cater to them also."

The exhibitors ranged from giants such as Goya and Coca-Cola to mom and pop producers, including Houston's own La Vaquita cheese company.

"We want to expose our product to buyers from all over the country," La Vaquita vice president Elizabeth Gray said. For now, the cheeses sell across Texas, as well as in Tennessee, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Florida, New Jersey and Boston.

Among the exotic sweets on display were earthy, moist crystallized pumpkin chunks from Trechas Foods in Hidalgo; an icy, zingy cucumber-chile frozen pop; and a cinnamon-flavored, taco-shaped fortune cookie from Los Quitos Cookie Co.

peggy.grodinsky@chron.com