Italian Food Awards USA spotlight pasta-adjacent products in North America

De Cecco Protein Boost won the Pasta, Pizza & Baking Ingredients category at the eighth Italian Food Awards USA inside the Jacob Javits Convention Center, putting a protein-forward pasta product in the middle of one of specialty food’s busiest buying rooms. Di Marco’s Pinsa Classica Fresh_by_Frozen 2x8.1 oz Retail took the Innovation special prize, while Le Vie del Tartufo’s Hot Truffle Honey won Packaging.

The awards were folded into the 2026 Summer Fancy Food Show, which ran June 28-30 in New York and returned to the city for the 70th time. Specialty Food Association describes the show as a premier product discovery and networking event, with tens of thousands of specialty food professionals and more than 40 specialty food categories on the floor. That mattered for the Italian awards because buyers were already there scouting what to bring into stores, distributors were already comparing launches, and the Italian Pavilion was one of the largest and most visited international areas at the show.

Italianfood.net said the awards honor Italian food and beverage products launched over the prior two years in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, so the field was built to measure what is actually moving in North American channels, not just what looks good on a display table. Final scoring in 2026 gave 30% weight to NIQ sales data, alongside qualitative votes from the Special Jury, which made the results a mix of market performance and category judgment.

For pasta readers, De Cecco’s win is the clearest shelf signal in the list. Protein Boost is the kind of line extension that speaks to today’s retail math, a familiar Italian name pitched through a functional lens that specialty buyers can explain quickly to shoppers. Di Marco’s Pinsa Classica Fresh_by_Frozen 2x8.1 oz Retail points to a related lane: dough products that sit close to pizza and pasta in the Italian pantry, but travel well through freezer cases and store demos. Together, those wins suggest that buyers are still rewarding Italian products that balance tradition with a format that fits modern merchandising.

The 2025 edition had pointed in the same direction. Italianfood.net said it was the seventh Italian Food Awards USA, and it tied the event to a strong export backdrop, with Italian agri-food exports to the U.S. reaching $8.6 billion in 2024, up 17% from 2023. With the Italian Pavilion again packed and the awards ceremony set for June 29 at 5:00 p.m. EDT in Room 1A03/04 on Level 1, the show kept turning the pasta aisle into a live trade test.