The NYC Fancy Food Show, Best Buddies, and NPR

I have a best friend. (I have a few best friends, but let's not confuse things.) Because of this best friend, I am blessed with the chance to propose crazy outings and find my suggestions met with enthusiasm. I do the same for her, so hopefully it's all relatively fair. I'll call my best friend "Ethel".

Why would I call her Ethel? Honestly, I've been wanting to use the name ever since my previous dog, Babe, wound up in the pound after getting loose from my yard. When I went to pick her up, I found that her "pound name" was Ethel. Weirdly, I could totally see where they got that. So, in tribute to the good people from the county dog pound who saved my dog when I was stupid, I shall call one of my best friends Ethel for the duration of this story.

The thing I proposed to Ethel, the springboard of this story, was a community college outing to the Fancy Food Show in NYC on June 28th. I have occasionally taken cooking classes at this college, and they were offering a one-day trip, leaving at ungodly 6 A.M. and returning at ungodly 11 P.M., up to NYC to attend this rather broadly named exhibition. I was intrigued. If there's anything in the world I like, it's food, and if people are calling it fancy, I want it. Ethel, as per our friendship agreement, enthusiastically agreed.

We had no idea what to expect. And what we encountered was different, sometimes in surreal ways, from what I anticipated. But it was an experience we enjoyed thoroughly, both for its good parts and its bad, because both contributed rich material to our store of shared experience.

It's now nearly a month later. I was attending a technical conference that let out early the other day, and because of that, I heard a story on NPR by Fresh Air about a mass grave in Afghanistan while I was on my way home. Because that story was only halfway through and had me by the ears, I turned on NPR when I walked in the house, which is rare for me. Normally NPR is strictly a car thing. Because I had it on in the house, I happened to hear a listener complaint on All Things Considered about a weird Planet Money piece pretending to stage a reality show at... the Fancy Food Show in NYC. The listener panned the piece, but I, of course, muted the radio and leapt at my computer to hear the archived segment. (Have I mentioned how deeply I love the Internet?) I listened to the half hour broadcast, which can be found here: Planet Money's Fancy Food Show Contest

The segment is, admittedly, a little trite. In particular, I thought the part about including a mythical creature was just stupid. Aside from that, though, the notion of pulling three economics stories out of the Fancy Food Show, and making a contest out of it so that the story would also include commentary from the judges about story quality... well, I thought that was quite interesting. It may seem disjoint, but to me, pondering the workings of our economy and pondering the workings of a good radio story are things of a kind, and I felt like they blended just fine with each other.

My own vote went to Adam Davidson, and during this story, I'll explain why.

Adam wrote a piece on discovering, tucked in a back corner of the food show, a long table of four or five Palestinian food distributors. I remember this table. Unfortunately, I tried none of the food, and the reason for that was simply that I was more full than I believed a human could be. Ethel and I hadn't paced ourselves at all. When we arrived at the food show well before noon, our eyes bugged out on stalks at the sight of the convention floor. There were booths as far as the eye could see, arranged in neat rows, many with nationalities displayed above, and we firmly believed that we could sample every single thing that was on offer. After all, each booth would surely only offer bite sized treats, yes?

We were in for a bit of a surprise. First of all, I had thought the word "Fancy" modified the word "Food", but we soon realized that wasn't the case. "Fancy" modified the word "Show". Much as Adam described in his piece, each booth was dolled up far beyond what I had been expecting, with rich paneling and sophisticated decorations, marble countertops, silver bowls, attractive and slightly hostile hosts and hostesses. This phenomenon was independent of the food being offered; many, many people looked down their noses at me that fine Sunday, and not a few of those people were manning booths offering rice crackers and crispbreads. We would sidle up to a booth hoping for a treat, and the booth host would look down at our badges, see we were from a community college, and don a look of unmistakable disdain. Ethel, bless her heart, was immune to this look. I, on the other hand, took to fabricating elaborate stories about the exact status of my "studenthood" and my role in the world of culinary excellence. At various times I was considering starting a business, hoping to work at an organic-foods restaurant, or planning for retirement and a second career. I couldn't help trying to make at least the occasional host doubt his snap judgment about me, though I surely fooled no one, especially when my fairy-tale-spinning led me to hand one fellow my "card" for a follow-up consultation, and he saw I was an engineer at a technical research firm.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that nobody actually wanted us to eat their food, we did, and it turned out that if you eat bite sized pieces of everything you see, you get quite full in about an hour. Especially if the first row you walked down was mostly bread, and you didn't have the foresight to realize this was all part of a master plan to keep the neophytes from eating the expensive stuff. We actually overheard someone complaining that the real buyers must have "given all their tickets to their family members, who have all just come here to eat the food", as if that was somehow... wrong.

It didn't take us long to notice that there was something odd about the food show. In something like ten acres of booths, there was surprisingly little variety in the offerings. We joked that next year, we can save ourselves the trip: all we have to do is set up, on one of our kitchen islands, a buffet comprising a bowl of olives, some finger-sized bread, some cheese, a fruit flavored tea, some high end chocolate, and a hunk of sausage. Each time we finished, we'd have Ethel's husband rearrange the dishes and we could go down the row again. Every third pass, he'd replace the olives with some other random pickled antipasto. Every fifth pass, he'd replace the chocolate with some other kind of candy. Every tenth pass, he'd throw in a random ethnic item like honey, flavored instant rice, or anything soy flavored.

This is the first reason I liked Adam's story best: it was actually about the economics of the food show itself. It didn't take long for Ethel and me to begin wondering aloud what the Fancy Food Show was really all about. Who were really the customers of this show? We tried to picture exactly what sort of business would cross half the continent to taste a hundred different varieties of only eight foods. Sometimes, we'd get a glimpse, maybe a prim looking woman wearing a Whole Foods badge. We'd occasionally see two business-suited people sitting together at a side table earnestly discussing matters over someone's stern leather organizer. But such sightings were rare; mostly we appeared to be amidst an enormous number of exhibitors eating each other's food. So, while I didn't try any of the food at that back-corner Palestinian display, I appreciated Adam's explanation of what on earth those people were doing there, what they hoped to gain from exhibiting at the convention. I think he characterized the intended audience as restaurant suppliers and food distributors. In other words, not chefs and cooks and caterers, but the people who supply them; not the people who taste and eat the food, but the people who ship them the food. Which meant, perhaps, that the overriding criterion for whether a food fit in at the Fancy Food Show was its bulk shippability. This is what jars of pepperoncini and fancy gift chocolate have in common; they are things one might want to buy in bulk and resell. This is why the occasional spice display didn't feature its products by preparing delectable imaginatively-curried chicken bites; delicious chicken bites say "yum", not "ship me!" Instead, they displayed their spices dry, in bowls, because their potential customer puts flavor much farther down the list of must-haves than Ethel and I did.

The second thing I liked about Adam's story was the bit where he told the Palestinian Bugle-imitator that his chips were very good, when they were in fact horrible. This turned out to be quite a problem for Ethel and me. Neither one of us wanted to be rude to any of the booth proprietors, so we were loathe to admit to anyone's face that we didn't like their product. But it soon became woefully apparent that we had limited space in our stomachs, so if one of us tried a sample, it was imperative to know whether said sample was actually worth the stomach space it occupied. Many times, one of us would say complimentary things about a taste of whatnot, and that would lure the other of us into trying it, and then only after walking away would it become apparent that neither of us had enjoyed the experience. Later in the afternoon, when stomach-space considerations got dire, we finally decided we needed a code. We agreed that, if one of us proclaimed a morsel to be "delicious", that meant it was to be avoided.

This seemed like a foolproof plan, but it encountered an unexpected hitch. For the next twenty foods we tried, we never had to resort to the code word. They were all pretty darn good. So it was more than an hour later when we finally wound up at a Swiss non-fat chocolate energy drink booth, where I gamely tried a swig. Ethel, it must be realized, loves chocolate. In spite of the absolute deluge of chocolate products at this food show, Ethel was still interested in this Swiss drink. As I quaffed the offending beverage, I could see Ethel leaning towards me slightly, in physical anticipation of my judgment. I smacked my lips, pretended to appear thoughtful, and said, "Wow. That is delicious."

And just as the booth attendant began to look pleased, Ethel's face crumpled in visible disappointment and she plaintively said, "Awww, really?" I held my breath, because the only thing worse than Swiss non-fat chocolate energy drink on one's tongue is Swiss non-fat chocolate energy drink up one's nose. I affirmed, "Yeah, delicious!" as I wheeled smoothly away from the booth, pretending to sip appreciatively at my drink. I crossed the aisle to gain some distance and collect myself, pitched the container into the trash, and wheeled on Ethel.

"What the hell is the purpose of a code word if you're going to totally give away its meaning the second I use it??!" I hollered.

"Was I that obvious?" Ethel asked. I imitated her response and she cracked up and shrugged. "It's not like we're going to see these people again anyhow," she submitted. I begged to disagree. I am odd enough looking to be highly memorable, and I have had people walk up to me a decade after some event and describe in detail not only my presence at said event, but exactly what I was wearing. Ethel pretended to be chastened, but I could tell she was faking it.

My point is, I could totally relate to Adam pretending to like those fake Bugles. He should just be thankful he didn't have Ethel with him to blow his cover.

The final reason I liked Adam's piece best was the fact that he incorporated his mythical beast reference in Arabic. As I said at the start, I thought this story requirement was silly and extraneous, so the fact that he managed to fulfill it without annoying me with it was a stroke of genius.

I had gone to the food show fully expecting to spend my day in the Asian foods sections; they are my favorite cuisines. That's because I had envisioned steaming samples of gourmet pad thai and be bim bap and loc lac, not packaged soy crackers and brochures about freeze-dried mushrooms. The real show being what it was, it turned out that the jewel in the geode was the cheese section, with an acre of fabulous blues and gorgonzolas and washed-rind-this and goat-that. This was where Ethel and I returned after a long, long day on our feet. These were the last bites we crammed down our completely overtaxed gullets. And this was where we felt at home, because this seemed to be the most reliably welcoming corner of the exhibition.

It was good that we ended our day on such a good note, because our community college bus trip home featured a five hour ride in our wholly inadequate death-trap of a vehicle, complete with a very loud woman in the back intent on detailing her thoughts on everything from her resentment of her stepmother to her husband's shoe-insert size to her friend's upcoming wedding shower. If there hadn't been duct tape holding the emergency exit window in place, Ethel and I might have eased her through it.