International Food Show

Today was no class work, but a trip to the Jacob Javitz Center on the west side of Manhattan for the Food Show. It was the biggest snow storm of the year, so most of the class didn't make it, nor did most other attendees. Some booths remained unstaffed, notably our friends from last week's field trip, the Hunts Point Fish Market. Baldor, however, had a huge booth cranking out hot samples to taste.

I focused on all things pizza, and found some notably gross products spread out through the convention. One group was selling an "encruster" machine. Basically anything that can be frozen can be surround in dough to be baked. Simply, a machine that pumps out hot-pockets. Another were all about super thin pre-baked pizza crusts which tasted basically like tortilla wraps, made a little crisp. Someone came up with this and bet money on it? Damn. There was a baking supply outlet with some nice pizza peels and decorative pizza pans, and a company that sold all sorts of gas-burning pizza ovens.


There was a pizza pavilion which was quite underwhelming, sponsored by a pizza trade magazine. A flour distributor, a company that gives away free pizza boxes with ads all over them, a purveyor of pizza-centric food supplies, a company pushing a remarkably cheesy (no pun intended) franchise out of friggin' Buffalo, NY. I mean, really? Maybe I'm a snob, but NYC seems to be overwhelmed with slice joints, many of which are great, many more which are whatevs. The angle that should be being pushed is pizza sophistication, not more cheap sloppy garbage pie-style stuff.

There was an exciting list of talks and events listed for the day, but the bad weather pushed everything back and I never got to see the USA Pizza Team do dough acrobatics on latex pizza skins and watch Dom DeMarco of DiFara's get awarded a life-time achievement award. Oh well.

And if your playing a drinking game while reading this, here ya go: pizza. Pizza pizza pizza.