🚀 go-pugleaf

(Posted for a friend)

Last year I went to the National Restaurant Show here in Chicago.  It's a
fun place.  I've wanted to be a writer for some time, so I thought I'd
write a semi-humorous piece about the experience and submit it to
newspapers and magazines.  Surely *someone* would take it.  

Ten months later all have responded with resounding indifference.  Now, I
can handle the rejection (I'm lying -- it huuurrts!), I'm not bitter (but
*** ******'s crap gets published *every* *day*, for chrissake), and it's
not the best thing I've ever written (ego defense #4:  They only rejected
the second-rate stuff).  What really bothers me is that if I just throw it
away nobody gets any benefit at all out of the effort.  So I'm putting it
out there for you to look at, if you like, so that maybe *somebody* will
get *something* out of it.  Even if nobody tells me they like it, I can
always tell myself that there could be *one* person out there who liked
it, right?  That could work, couldn't it?  Do you get the feeling my
skin's too thin to be a writer? 

So why don't you give it a read, and see if you don't agree with my best
friend, who said, um, "It's not that it's *bad*, it's just not like
anything I've ever seen in a newspaper or magazine."  <sigh>  And don't
forget to get your sneaking-in shoes ready, because this year's show
starts May 20.  

(Don't hurt me if the punctuation's a little off.  I had to export it from
Pagemaker, and it lost something in the translation.)

As they say in the restaurant biz, enjoy.  Or, rather, enjoy!  (And who the 
**** are they to tell you what to do, anyway?)


     EATING DISORDER WORLD
     A VISIT TO THE 1994 NRA RESTAURANT SHOW
     (c) Copyright 1994 Tom Gray
    

     The Taste of Chicago is a foretaste of Hell. It features
searing heat, intimate contact with masses of sweaty, suffering humanity
in Brownian motion, and the torment of service by rushed, indifferent
staff. In compensation you get a limited selection of ordinary food at
anesthetist prices. You do not want to go there. Not if you have accepted
food into your life, openly embraced it, developed a truly close personal
relationship with it.  Where you want to go instead is to the National
Restaurant Association's annual restaurant show, at McCormick Place 
each May. Admission to Heaven is just $12.50. 

     The show is open only to the trade, and to get the full impact of the
experience you should sneak in by using a discarded show badge your first
time. (Neither the author nor this publication advocates or condones
sneaking into the restaurant show. Besides, you can always just use a fake
business card to get in. Which we don't approve of either.) Passing the
pearly gates after two hours of exhausting, discouraging trash inspection
can only be experienced, not described. This year we attended the show
legitimately, mostly because it's a commandment for exhibitors to read
your name from your badge and use it in the very first sentence of your
conversation. Like one of the Three Stooges always falling for the same
trick, I'm invariably stunned for a few seconds, wondering how the other
person has managed to read my mind. Being called by someone else's name
only heightens my confusion. 

     Inside there are hundreds and hundreds of booths, each, like a little
flower, designed to entice you to stay for awhile. There are cute little
puppets and robots to talk to, karaoke machines to sing along with,
comedians to listen to, video and virtual reality games to play, contests
to enter, ice sculptures to watch being carved, cooking demos, massaging
furniture, aerobic chefware fashion shows, and Bud girls. And, oh, yes,
the food. They give away samples, like at the grocery store on weekends,
only on a much grander scale; everything else is really just a sideshow.
There are samples of just about everything you could possibly want to put
in your mouth. There are strange foods (pepper flavored jellies), familiar
foods (fried chicken), expensive foods (big chunks of Alaskan King Crab),
foods that mysteriously taste far better than at home (Hot Pockets),
trendy foods (jalapeno in many contexts), foods that taste a lot better
than you'd imagine (meatless burgers), foods cooked by celebrities, and
pretty much unlimited alcohol of all varieties. The samples are small, but
this is good since, gut willing, you can consume dozens of samples in one
visit, and seconds are allowed. The servers seem to like you and act as if
it would truly be an honor to have you sample their offerings. If, like
me, you have food at all confused with love, the effect leaves
you feeling very warm indeed. If, like me, you also have food at
all confused with security, you can relax, knowing that on all four
giant display floors, you are never more than 100 or so feet from
comfort.

     On our first day, we quickly ruled out attending any seminars
(no samples). We headed for the top floor of the East building
because that's where the big money exhibitors are, and because the
alcohol is free flowing, easily visible, and mostly concentrated at
one end of the floor. This means that you can explore the floor
systematically in lengthwise sweeps, pausing at the start of each
pass to maintain your buzz. 

     We started at the Budweiser exhibit, where last year you could
try your hand at velcro jumping. This year there were only the Bud
girls, standing around in sequined outfits and getting their
pictures taken with conventioneers. I'm kind of unclear on the Bud
girl concept, and still have many questions. Do they do anything
aside from pose? Were there ever any unattractive Bud girls? Are
they the same women that used to act attracted to Spuds Mackenzie
in those commercials? Do they have super powers? Is there a Bud
girl legend, like with the Power Rangers? What signs did they
receive that they should get together and ally themselves with a
brewing company? Thus far my inquiries have been met only with
strange looks.

     Restaurant and bar training videos have a big presence at the
show, and they're entertaining, though pricey. Bud had one called
How to Sell More Beer. Right near that was a video called
Intervention Techniques, about how to get your customers to drink
less. It happens that the latter video is put out by the NRA's
Educational Foundation, as part of their SERVSAFE training program.
SERVSAFE is a response to successful suits against bars for
overserving customers who later caused car accidents. "Protect
yourself, your operation and your employees with SERVSAFE," reads
the brochure. (I'm sure they meant to include customers and the
general public as well.) I mentioned to the SERVSAFE woman that the
two videos seemed at cross purposes and she agreed, but, lest I
think that the NRA had lost its mind, she quickly reassured me that
the program also teaches how to increase check averages by
upselling to premium brands and selling more food.

     Apparently no one has yet sued a restaurant for an excess of
cigarette smoke, because the NRA's presence at the Miller booth was
in the form of a table promoting the sharing of airspace by smokers
and nonsmokers. (The NRA opposes legislation restricting smoking in
restaurants.) There were also performances by a man who'd jerk
around onstage to rock music while painting a portrait of the
singer. The other end of the exhibit contained a big screen
electronic trivia game, in which my girlfriend beat out twenty or so
people, including me, to become insufferable for the rest of the
afternoon.  It was followed by a video in which beer bottle caps
race around a track with no visible means of propulsion. You were
supposed to cheer as loudly as you could for "your" bottle cap, in
order to "help it to win" -- provide it with moral support or
something. It seemed like a really dumb idea until our bottle cap
won and we collected our prizes. Now it seems like a stroke of
genius.

     Seagram also had a game, of sorts. Actually, it's a virtual
reality computer program called Absolut Museum. The curious premise
of the program is that there is a museum where people go to view
photos, paintings, etc., from the Absolut Vodka advertising
campaign. You're supposed to use the computer's mouse to steer
yourself through the hallways of the museum to get to the
paintings. It reminded me of one of those tank video games: I'd
smash into a wall, back up, turn a bit, then smash into the same
wall again. The prospect of locating and navigating to over 200
exhibits this way was wearying for me, but if the idea of bouncing
a tank through a museum devoted to vodka ads appeals to you, the
program is available for sale.

     One of the nice aspects of the show is all the take-home
freebies you can accumulate, ranging from show literature to
coasters to buttons to fortune cookies to sauce packets. My
favorite was from Edward Don: nice, sturdy drinking glasses that
are marked to double as measuring cups when none of your real
measuring cups are clean. True, it's slightly embarrassing to serve
your guests in glassware that reads, "The Nation's Premier
Distributor of Foodservice Equipment Furnishings and Supplies," but
still, let's see the Japanese beat that. A lot of exhibitors see an
advertising opportunity in putting their names on plastic bags you
can carry your handouts in. Somehow we had Ecolab bags when we
visited the Diversey booth. They insisted that we switch to the
much higher quality Diversey bags. When we went to Ecolab they
insisted that we switch back to the much higher quality Ecolab
bags. It seems that Ecolab and Diversey, giants in the restaurant
sanitation biz, have something of a rivalry going, don't have what
it takes to actually spill some blood, and have decided instead to
settle for playing silly little plastic bag games. I'd have to say
that I side with Ecolab. Their exhibit was larger and more
expensive than any house I'll ever own. More important, they had
lots and lots of commanding, confident, competent, charismatic,
cnowlegeable actors standing around in white lab coats, just like
scientists in the movies. They told us that a spectacular light
show was about to begin in the Ecolab dome. We thought we'd
stumbled upon some bizarre restaurant sanitation cult, because the
very attractive belabcoated woman who gave us an introduction to
the show clearly thought that Ecolab was more wondrous and sacred
than life itself. Then the multiscreen light, sound and smoke
extravaganza began, and she gazed up as proud and peaceful as if
ascending into Heaven. Images flashed and the voice of God boomed.
It was a transcendent experience, and all I can remember is that
Ecolab is a powerful, omniscient, omnipresent company that cares
about us very much and would never use its powers for evil, and
that it manufactures Solid Fun, an ultra-concentrated pot and pan
detergent. When the show was over the announcetress said that sales
representatives would be waiting for us at either exit, but somehow
we escaped unharmed. We next saw a presentation on "warewashing"
(dishwashing). One of the things I like about Ecolab is that they
use the word warewashing (as in, "breakthrough technology for your
warewashing needs," or "continually monitors your key warewashing
functions," or my favorite: "makes you a big warewashing winner")
as often as possible. You may have to take my word on this, but
"warewashing" is a very funny word. Lastly, we saw Reggie T. Rat.
Reggie is a big cute talking rat robot in a cage. Apparently rat
robot technology is still unperfected, because they took the added
precaution of chaining his leg. Reggie talks in a tranquilized
voice, like HAL from 2001, and seems to spend a lot of time having
attractive women touch his nose. The unspoken message seems to be
that (a) Rats are very cute creatures which (b) people don't mind
touching, which is a good thing, since (c) Ecolab makes your rats
very big indeed.

     We stepped to a nearby booth where someone was winning a prize
by answering the following question:

     Vanderburg's line of portion controlled spreads include which
of the following brand names:

(a) Promise margarine
(b) I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
(c) Chef's Country Crock
(d) All of the above

     It was hard to get excited about the game since no effort was
made to hide the fact that the winning prizes and the consolation
prizes were both drawn from the same bucket and weren't exactly
trips to the Caribbean, if you catch my drift. There was no
motivation to excel.  Besides, nothing in the realm of butter
alternatives could top what happened earlier in the day: I
accomplished my lifelong dream of eating spread directly from a
plastic tub, in the Gold-n-Soft taste test challenge. Sure enough,
Gold-n-Soft ("Ideal for applications requiring the special
properties of butter") achieved superior mouthfeel, tongue
coverage, and all around buttery good flavor compared to the
competition. (By the way, at the end of the day, queasy from
stuffing myself, I conceived the following catchphrase, which I
hereby donate to Proctor and Gamble, the makers of Whirl butter
alternative: "I'm gonna Whirl!")

     We headed for the Coca-Cola exhibit which was, as you might
expect, quite large. When we got there the area was roped off and
contained a giant walking version of one of the polar bears in the
Coke commercials. It was quite impressive, an effective combination
of the familiar and the alien. We initially thought that it was
entirely robotic, because off to the side was a handler with
electronic headgear, usually a giveaway. It turns out that the man
in the bear has video screens to help him see, but they don't cover
the area right in front of him very well. The roping off and the
handlers are there to stop the man (hopefully not recruited from
among the ranks of disgruntled ex postal workers) from trampling
people, thereby inspiring some exotic headlines. 

     The guy in the big green Coco Lopez pina colada parrot suit
could have used some handlers. He had some delightful bits
(especially one where he tries to fly but gives up in frustration),
but people, other exhibitors, mostly, kept reaching up and bopping
him on the beak. I felt like avenging his honor, but there was no
way of telling whether it even bothered him. Which leads me to a
major, embarrassing, confession: Whenever I get near large moving
cartoonlike animals, I feel this intense urge to get them to admit
that they know that I know that there's really a person inside - in
short, that they aren't real. So in a flash of brilliance I got the
idea to say to the parrot, "nice job." It was supposed to be my way
of letting him know that I was in on the secret, hinting that I too
had experienced employment as bird innards. I figured that at the
very least he'd say thanks. True professional that he was, he said
thanks, all right, but in bird body language. He wasn't fooling me,
though: there was a man in that bird suit.

     Nearby was the Lamb Weston booth, a french fry supplier whose 
slogan was "fry first class." They had several men standing around
in airline pilot outfits (get it?) offering samples of pizza, "just
because we have it." We figured they ran out of their own food and
made a raid on one of the other, weaker, booths. We looked around
for a likely candidate. The only other pizza we could find in the
area was a barbecued chicken, pineapple, and macadamia nut pizza,
which was, of course, from California and was, of course, just
awful. A neighboring sample giver was too afraid to give it a try.
She had been traumatized by the previous day's offering: peanut
butter and banana pizza.

     Downstairs at the Cave Creek booth they had jalapeno flavored
beer, complete with a pepper in each bottle. Having actually tried
this, I can report that it is a TRULY BAD IDEA, an abomination in
the eyes of me. In all fairness, this sample wasn't quite as bad as
one I had last year. I had to ask more than one representative to
find out, but it turns out that they've toned down the jalapeno
since then. They gave out stickers with the letters NFL, for "no
fucking limes," which supports my theory that it's just a macho
thing. 

     The Shat-r-shield folks address the problem of shattered heat
lamps: "...you clean up a mess. You wonder if you got it all.
Maybe you throw out some food, just to be safe." Or maybe you just
sell it at a discount. Whatever, Shat-r-shield solves the problem
by encasing the bulb in tough transparent plastic. I asked the
representative if she could break one in my presence, and she
handed me a four foot fluorescent bulb. After putting several large
ugly dents in the front of her booth I managed to break it. It felt
like an explosion, it sounded like an explosion, but sure enough,
it stayed in one piece. Seriously, the highlight of the show for
me.

     Shortly afterward we saw Martin Yan (from the Yan Can Cook
cooking series on PBS) giving autographs, so we got into line. My
girlfriend was squirming with excitement at the prospect of meeting
him. The closer we got, the more she lost her composure, until,
when we finally got to him, she could hardly speak. Later we talked
to Chef Paul Prudhomme (K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen), an instantly
likeable man. Same reaction. I have got to keep that woman away
from celebrities.

     The NRA is a powerful lobbying force and had an exhibit set up
where you could call your representatives or write them
personalized computer letters. The exhibit had a huge sign, like
those you see in museums showing key points in the history of the
earth, except that instead of marking milestones in geologic
evolution it noted various atrocities the government had committed
upon the restaurant industry, mostly in the form of empowering and
protecting workers or raising taxes. Clearly Rush would be proud,
but that didn't move me to action. Nor had I been roused upon
learning, to my horror, that 14 year olds are still not allowed to
operate meat cutting equipment in the workplace ("NRA: adapt child
labor laws to modern times" Nation's Restaurant News, May 13 1991,
p30). But I knew I had to do something when I read about the
reduction of the business meal deduction first to 80% and then to
50% - it is only a matter of time before businesspeople have to
stop eating, the alternative being to pay for their meals in the
same way that the rest of us do. My head was filled with visions of
anorexic businessfolk wandering the hallways of corporate America
zombie-like, with great deals to close but no suitable venues in
which to close them, while the giant United States economy grinds
to a halt. So I used their phone to call my representatives. Then
I called some friends in California to lobby them for a while.

     A few industries had disproportionately large representation
at the show:
* Machines to make margarita slush drinks and similar frozen
cocktails. Unfortunately the exhibitors were generally not eager to
give samples, and a large number of those we did get had little or
no alcohol. 
* Espresso/cappucino machines. Impressive, shiny devices, like oil
refineries writ small, frequently demonstrated by people with
genuine Italian accents. 
* Integrated computer systems for taking orders, printing up
checks, etc. These were so abundant that it's hard to believe that
many will survive for long.
* Rotisserie chicken grills. Rotisserie chicken is hot right now.
The truly amazing thing is that each demonstrator can go on and on
in great detail and with much enthusiasm about how different their
grill is from the others, when they're all your basic amusement
park ride for dead chickens. The only real difference is that some
look like ferris wheels and some like merry-go-rounds.

     Every year the show holds the Culinary Arts Salon, in which
professional, apprentice, and student chefs showcase their work in
a feast for the eyes only. (Not only would samples be in bad taste,
they might taste bad, since some of the displays looked heavily
varnished.) The key to a visually appealing presentation seems to
be to spread a small amount of food across a large serving platter
in wide arcs, then spill sauce on the plate, being careful not to
let the sauce touch the food. 

     The technological marvel of the show has got to be the Flash
Bake oven. A spinoff of the semiconductor industry, it cooks by
shining visible and infrared light on the food, like a heat lamp on
steroids. Cooking time is but a fraction of that required by a
conventional oven, and the food is evenly and thoroughly browned.
The oven cavity is only inches high, so it makes a great pizza oven
but can't cook a turkey, and there are no home units available yet,
but now is the time to start telling your friends about it in order
to look like a techie genius in years to come.

     Nearby, a man from the American Ostrich Association ("the
largest and most geographically diverse organization in the ostrich
industry") was there to promote the use of ostrich meat ("the
premier red meat of the next century"). Ostrich is lower in fat
than beef or chicken, with almost as much protein. On the downside,
production costs are high and meat is hard to come by, since only
animals unfit for breeding are presently being slaughtered. (And I
don't know about you, but I find "ostrich" kind of hard to
pronounce.) They gave away tiny samples of ostrich sausage that
tasted like (no, not chicken) salami, and copies of a recipe
curiously named "Ostrich 3G."

     As time wore on, I found to my dismay that I was getting
greedier and crankier, viewing the show more and more as existing
solely for my benefit. And I found it lacking. I first started
becoming annoyed at the stretches of nine or ten booths with no
food samples at all. Where once I pitied, for example, the lonely
fast food drive-up window representatives, I now felt annoyed at
their presence. Worse were the exhibits that looked as though they
had samples, but didn't. Particularly irritating were those that
displayed heat lamps; the red-yellow glow was otherwise a surefire
sample indicator. There were even times when I felt like telling
sample givers, "You'll have to do better than that, buddy."

     There wasn't much more time to be cranky, however, because
although the official close was still some time away, the show was
winding down. This period is especially invigorating, because it's
about as close as you can morally and legally come to looting in
the aftermath of a disaster. Booths are torn down, carpets are
pulled up, exhibitors seem overtaken by some biological need to
zoom home. They start to give away massive amounts of perfectly
good merchandise in an attempt to lighten the load, and not just
leftover samples, either - boxes, cans, jars, six packs. We
initially tried to maintain some composure but gave up and joined
the frenzy when we passed people lugging garbage bags packed with
Snapple bottles. We met with little success at first, but patience,
luck, a discerning eye, greed, and lack of shame soon paid off.
When it was all over we had four huge bags of prizes, much of which
we can actually use.

     (Do we have any regrets over our behavior? Only one, really.
Refrigerated Life Support Systems and others had huge tanks full of
fish and lobster. It didn't occur to us until later that it'd
probably be a lot easier for them if they didn't have to lug all
that water back home with them...)

     We dragged our booty back to the car, our bodies exhausted,
our stomachs overfilled, and our heads packed with slogans and
catchphrases that wouldn't go away:

"Candy is high energy fun food"
"not offensive to customers"
"America's number one prebaked frozen belgian waffle"
"Finally, the video the espresso industry has been waiting for!"
"Say no to batter. Say yes to Belgian Chef."
"Calimari. Imagine the possibilities."
"exciting 'healthy' new products from Uncle Ben's"
"The sneezeguard specialists"
"The best thing since the #10 can"
"Turn your potsink into a safe multi-station prep area."
"Pork. The other white meat."
"Beef. It's what's for dinner."
     
Sometimes Heaven and Earth are a lot alike.