Foodie Expo

 

This, my friends, made my cooking dinner a frustrating experience. My lunch today was a very, very hard act to follow.

I managed to score a pass into one of the biggest food service conventions in the world. About half of it was booths of deserted displays of cookware, restaurant furniture, and servingware, staffed by alternately bored and angry vendors.

The vendors were bored and angry because everyone else was ignoring them and going straight to the other half of the booths: The food vendors.

"Why?" you might ask. Well it's pretty simple. Take vendors who have good enough products to feature at one of the biggest food service conventions in the world and whisper two words into their ear: 'free samples.'

I munched on about a dozen different kinds of gourmet cheese, fresh calamari and clams with sauces I'd never imagined before, ginger ale made with fresh ginger and infused with things ranging from passion fruit to jasmine tea, and Angus beef sliders. But the top prize in my mind goes to what you see in the picture above. Not on the display, look at the small black plate in the hand of the man taking a picture with his iPhone. That, ladies and gentlemen, is lobster ravioli with a saffron cream sauce. The fresh lobster chunks inside were nearly size of my thumb.

...what the heck are you supposed to cook yourself after eating that?

A tasty end to a satisfying weekend. My mouth and stomach have finally forgiven me for making the mistake on Saturday of trying to cure my second ever hangover with the closest thing to chicken noodle soup I could find in the corner store: Hormel brand canned turkey stew. If I had seen the recipe on the back for "Teriyaki Turkey Chow Mein" before I had bought it, it would still be on their shelf instead all but three spoonfuls ending in my garbage can.

Clearly this city is too rough on me. I work about 10-15 hours a week to pay for a 1 bedroom apartment next to a public transit system that lets me go to parties miles away, introduces me to friends who like sending me audition notices, and then feeds me two days later with, let me repeat this, lobster ravioli with saffron cream sauce. Just the sacrifices we make, I guess.