Top 30 Must-Try Foods of 2019

If you like jelly beans and you like Peeps, how can you resist these? They aren’t shaped like little chicks, unfortunately, though there’s a stylized chick on the package. Each of the three varieties combines one of the fruit-flavored beans (blueberry, strawberry, and lemon) with the Peepish marshmallow flavor. The beans are available only at Kroger’s supermarkets and its (many) subsidiaries around the country.

You would have thought that all Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were for peanut butter-lovers, but Hershey’s, which owns the brand, has decided to really put the peanut butter front and center. In this version, the cups have the usual peanut buttery filling and a base of the usual chocolate, but the upper portion of the cup’s shell is now formed from peanut butter cream. If you’re a fan of the standard version of these confections, you’ll like these even more.

Tej is Ethiopian honey wine, or mead, flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of a plant called gesho, a kind of buckthorn, that adds a tinge of hops-like bitterness. There are some commercial brands available — including one brewed in Oakland, California — but they’re hard to find. Most Ethiopian restaurants will serve it, however, and it’s really very nice — not overly sweet, but pleasant and refreshing.

Kombucha is fermented tea from China, and hard (meaning alcoholic) seltzer is sparkling water with about the same alcohol content as light beer. Both have been big trends in recent years, so it’s natural that somebody thought to basically merge the two. The ABV of these drinks typically ranges from 3% to 8%, and they tend to be flavored with various fruits, herbs, and spices (blueberry basil, blood orange mint, etc.). They have more body and generally more punch than hard seltzer and make a good substitute for your usual IPA or cider.

Speaking of IPAs, don’t worry: Milkshake IPAs, a newly popular craft beer category, aren’t spiked milkshakes or beer and ice cream blends. They’re a variation on a New England-style ale to which lactose, pectin, or oats have been added during the brewing process to produce a particularly thick, creamy texture. Various kinds of fruit, non-fermentable sugars, and spices like vanilla are usually included. They’re sort of like hop-tinged smoothies (though in fact there’s also a category known as smoothie IPAs). To put it another way, their relation to a straightforward pint of bitter is about like that of a fancy Frappuccino to a cup of pour-over Joe.