The Fat Chef
Chesapeake Cooking with Andrew Evans
The Inside Scoop of a Food Show
Imagine getting an invite that includes a free hotel room in Ocean City, an orgy of food samples to eat, a nice dinner out with your sales rep and the promise of drunken dancing and debauchery at Secrets nightclub?
Well it’s a tough decision, and I need to organize my socks and clean the kitty litter box—OK, you’ve twisted my arm. I’ll go.
The food show in Ocean City has become a bit of a spring rite of passage, or more accurately, a short “Spring Break” for restaurateurs on the Eastern Shore, all of us hoping and wishing for better weather—and some customers. It’s a a reward for surviving the long winter, which is not unlike James Stewart overseeing the run on his Savings and Loan bank.
The trip to Ocean City is a breeze without the beach traffic and hopes are high for having a good time on the backs of all those distributors..and maybe I’ll see a new product or two. But on the way to the convention center I made a tragic mistake: feeling full of bravado, I bet my girlfriend that whomever loses our impromptu put-put golf game would have to drink a shot of tequila from the other’s shoe—but only after an hour’s worth of sweaty dancing. That was dumb. It turns out that my girlfriend had way too much practice playing put-put as a kid and scored six holes in one. What is this candid camera?
I hoped my loss was forgotten as we entered the convention center, viewing an ocean of booths peddling everything from ice cream creations to every imaginable breaded and deep-fried product you could think of. My favorite was the most earnest sales women I’ve ever met taking scissors to the corner of a clear plastic bag. “Just snip the corner and squeeze out the guacamole! How easy is that!” she told us. What? How easy is it to scope out an avocado, add lemon juice, olive oil and salt. Avocados are one of the world’s most perfect foods.
A couple of laps around the convention center eating samples reminds me of those giant buffets you get so excited about in the beginning. All that food—it all looks so good. You’re so hungry! You feel so gleeful about the whole experience at first, but it quickly turns to indifference, and finally, to downright revulsion as you head out the door with your stomach stretched out like a Roman emperor at a toga party. The food is also so much about convenience—not my thing. And lets face the facts, convenience means chemicals. You can’t have guacamole survive ten years in a plastic bag without intervention!
Next year, all bets are off. And, oh, yes, let’s just say the tequila tasted a bit more “mature” than at other times.
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