The year 2022 was a big one for the Local Palate Marketplace. We introduced more than 30 new vendors with gourmet goodies, quality kitchenware, and cocktail supplies. We launched the Cookbook Marketplace, complete with beautiful tried-and-true Southern cookbooks, as well as new titles from authors around the country. We even brought flavor to events, including the annual Whiskey After Dark in Charleston with booths for Ella’s Popcorn and Hogs Heaven along with a medley of other vendors represented at the curated Marketplace snack bar. As we greet the new year, we look back at what we loved and who we greeted over the past year:
Top-Selling Products on the Local Palate Marketplace in 2022
Tiffani Neal’s Original Pancake Mix and line of flavored syrups make morning meals quick and easy with made-from-scratch flavor and quality, whole ingredients.
This line of decadent, creamy pimento cheese blends began as a hot commodity at the South Hill, Virginia, farmers market. Now, creator Robin Allen’s original product ships around the country.
From spicy hot sriracha to buttery sweet caramel, the tasty sauces from this woman-owned company based in Charlottesville, Virginia, spans a range of flavor and can be used as cooking ingredients, condiments, or a finishing flavor.
Based in Virginia, this hot sauce company spans the globe with their assortment of flavors profiles covering Oaxaca, India, Ethiopia, Laos, and beyond.
Made from whole ingredients and naturally sweetened, Daysie syrups are a way to indulge that you can feel good about. Try them in coffee drinks, cocktails, or even add to baked goods.
Step aside, Planter’s—these deeply flavored extra-large peanuts have been grown, cooked, packaged, and sold from the same location in Courtland, Virginia, for 50 years.
Whether you’re looking for savory rubs, sweet and sticky sauces, or a bit of seasoning, Gentry’s BBQ specializes in various styles of Southern barbecue, with Tennessee- and Louisiana-style sauces and seasonings.
Love a little extra heat? Use Gesus Palomina jalapeño syrup and candied jalapeño relish to add sweet heat to cocktails, meat marinades, or as a condiment.
These crackling chicharrones (fried pork rinds) keep snacking fun with the puffed, airy crisps in various flavors, like Salt ’n Vinegar, Mesquite, and Extreme Heat.
Perfected within some of Charleston’s most iconic restaurants, Jack Rudy Cocktail Co.’s craft tonics, syrups, bitters, and gourmet garnishes bring restaurant-level cocktail sophistication to your home bartending.
If you can’t get to Nashville to get your hands on Pat Martin’s smoked, melt-in-your-mouth barbecue, order his Life of Fire cookbook along with Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint’s sauces and rubs to create your favorite recipes at home.
Elevate your road trip snack game with premium, peppery beef jerky that’s made from the leanest possible meat and uses all-natural, easy-to-pronounce ingredients.
What began as eight-year-old Peter Bowles’ first foray into entrepreneurship, Rainbow Trout Kitchen’s small-batch, hand-made granola has grown quite a following throughout the Richmond, Virginia, area. Today, the business is run by Peter’s mom and her friend Ashley Wallace, and every batch of granola is made with oats, Madagascar vanilla, clover honey, and other wholesome ingredients.
Get briny Virginia oysters delivered to your doorstep with this company that harvests oysters from different locations around the Chesapeake Bay, packs them on ice, and sends them to you (along with custom hot sauce and shucking essentials, if you want).
Sam Jones, from the family behind the renowned barbecue spot Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina, is creating his barbecue legacy in Raleigh and Greenville. If you can’t get to North Carolina, re-create your own sweet or tangy whole-hog ’cue with the restaurants’ signature sauces, rubs, and cookbook.
Carefully sourced produce from the owner’s farm in Hilton Head, South Carolina, heads straight to jars of farm-fresh sauces and mixes in a practice Seaside Grown calls “Field to Glass.”
No more bland bloody marys when you introduce this all-natural artisan mixer at the bar, made of a classic blend of tomato juice, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, horseradish, Tabasco, salt, pepper, and garlic salt.
Born and raised in El Paso, the now-Charleston-based creator Mark Ciaburri pours his professional culinary background into this line of smoky moles and zippy salsas, inspired by his home and the friends he made at various restaurant stints.
If you can’t get to this iconic Georgia barbecue spot on St. Simons Island (and it’s worth the trip), bring their flavors to your own kitchen with their signature pork, seafood, and chicken rubs; hot sauce; and sweet barbecue sauces.
These meticulously developed sauces celebrate North Carolina’s Western-style barbecue (pulled pork glazed with a tomato-based sauce). Flavors extend well beyond jammy tomato—try the Cherry Bomb, Perky Peach, Mustard Moonshine, or Campfire Gravy (made with smoky ancho peppers and bacon).
Flu season got you down? Charlotte-based mom Stephanie Rickenbaker started experimenting with elderberry syrup to combat her children’s winter colds, and the result is her line of products for a range of uses: syrup, extract, shrub, and tincture. This fruity syrup is all natural, allergen reducing, and tastes delicious—a major score for anyone with picky eaters.
As the story goes, Tommy Glassen’s journey began with a hangover, a phone call home to Mom, and eventually a family-developed product that’s now beloved by restaurant and home bartenders throughout South Carolina.
If jumbo roasted Virginia peanuts weren’t enough in and of themselves, Virginia Diner seasons them for all occasions—from Old Bay-seasoned snack mix for cocktail hour to butter toasted for dessert, and even Zatarain’s spicy Cajun peanuts for a snack worthy of replacing a meal.
Developed to dazzle under a kiss of fire, this line of pepper jellies from Georgia is a griller’s dream. Various flavors complement different proteins, like pineapple pepper jelly for shrimp, peach pepper jelly for pork, or blackberry pepper jelly for chicken.