Èspesso is a dessert I tried at Lavazza café. Lavazza coffee is the most well known Italian brand, dominant in Italy. They sell a lot of coffee in the United States in foodservice, but recently have opened their own branded cafes.  In Chicago I visited one of their locations in the Loop. It had a nice ambience, offering the usual hot and cold drink selections, pastries, sandwiches and marble topped tables. But the unusual selection I tried was called Èspesso, supposedly created by the well-known proponent of molecular gastronomy, Ferran Adrià of El Bulli restaurant in Spain. Èspesso is a cappuccino flavored foam (Adrià’s signature creation), dispensed from a hand held whipped cream dispenser. It was light and airy, with a mild coffee flavor and eaten with a spoon. It was an unusual change of pace from the beverages I typically enjoy, and it’s good to see people continuing to innovate coffee service in new and different ways.

Imagine a world filled with candy and chocolate where you can sample chocolate bars, fizzy drinks, bubble gum, cotton candy, licorice and gum drops. No, it’s not Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory – it’s the National Confectioner’s Association Sweets & Snacks Expo. Thousands of brands, iconic and new, are on display, exhibiting all manner of sweets and snacks. Some are a flashback like Bazooka gum and Pop Rocks.  Others are everyday indulgences like M&M’s. And others are new and unusual ways to eat sweets. Or inhale them.

Le Whif bills itself as “inhalable cuisine.” Inside a small, plastic, lipstick-sized tube is a very fine chocolate or coffee flavored powder. To experience it, you place the tube in your mouth and inhale. The powder in your mouth gives you all of the flavor promised but with none of the calories or the effect of feeling full. It is an interesting sensation. They gave me both chocolate and coffee and I enjoyed both. Certainly different than eating a chocolate bar or drinking a cappuccino!

Le Whif was developed in France and began selling in boutiques in Paris last year.  Now it’s available in the United States and its creators say it’s selling well at stores such as Dylan’s Candy Bar, a well-known specialty candy and confectionery store in Manhattan. This could be the beginning of a new trend of inhaling lots of interesting, unusual flavors. I look forward to it.

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”

“Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.”

“If you’re not falling every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”