Chicago and the NRA show

    The NRA Restaurant and Hospitality Convention, just took place in Chicago Illinois, and the Fork and Easel was there. It was a great trip, from getting off the first plane to sitting here in the airport waiting for the second, Chicago had a lot for us to experience.

    Saturday morning at 10 am, we step onto the convention floor of the McCormick Center,  it feel like walking into airport like PDX or Dallas Fort Worth.  The ceiling looks to be about 40 feet up with enough air recirculating through the massive space, you might think it has its own eco system. It takes us a few minutes to orient ourselves in the expanse of exhibits that seem to stretch for miles, and that is the first room. It took us three days of nearly non stop walking,  but we eventually made it to every one of the 55,000+ booths set up in the center. We also saw chefs Anne Burrell, Geoffrey Zakarian, and Robert Irvine, live at the world culinary showcase tour. And that's just what we did inside the convention.  When the floor closed at 5 we would head down stairs and catch the Metra train into town to explore the city. From hot dog stand, to world class dining,  and from award winning deep dish to drinks and desert at 1000 feet, we set out to experience one of America's fastest growing cities in food and hospitality... and eating!
    Obviously there is way to much to share it all, so we will stick to our favorites,  and if you were there feel free to share some of yours. Unfortunately photos were not allowed on the floor so you will have to live with a few from around the city, as well as some from the center itself.

    The product that impressed me the most at the show is a new soda called Sipp. They offer a variety of flavors,  but my favorite was their Ginger Blossom. Flavored with lemon, Ginger,  and vanilla,  this soda is like the best Italian cream soda you have ever had, except without the cream. I bet you could add cream to any of their sodas and it would be great though. The product is designed to be a more natural option for sodas, without adding colors or sweeteners,  and personally I think it tastes better. This can be hard to find in sodas, but the guys at Sipp are doing it right.

    The most impressive piece of equipment to me was an oil management system.  If you have ever cone filtered a fryer, then you know how much of a pain this job can be, however automatically filtered fryers tend to come with their own disadvantages. These guys at Vito Have figured out what seems to me to be a perfect median. The system itself is small and portable,  designed to be dropped into any standard fryer at operating temperature.  From there it works like an auto filter system,  turn it on and in 10 minutes your done. As an added bonus the pump creates a vortex effect that cleans as it filters. Take out the pump, clean it off, and put it a way.  Way easier then a cone filter, and a lot less expensive then an automatic option

     Another favorite discovery was the Oregon cherry growers, They offer I wide variety of cherry products, most notably their maraschinos, definitely the best topper cherry I have ever tasted. best part, they are a growers co-op from the Willamette Valley,  comprised of family farms they're producing a great product, and they're a great company, its hard to go wrong with that combination.

     Tatostix, this was one of the coolest things I saw, kind of a portable potato snack somewhere between  french fries and potato chips, these really stuck out to me. okay so they were just selling the machine to cut them, but really a giant spiral cut fried potato on a stick is pretty cool.

     Next was Sir Kensigton's, now this was a product that really blew me away. They make condiments, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard, maybe I was impressed because I wasn't expecting much, just the same old stuff in a new bottle, but I was wrong. I have had a hard time finding mayonnaise I actually liked, but this hit the nail on the head, almost identical to my best home made mayo and I was sold. Their ketchup and mustered were good too but the mayo is what stuck out.

 
    There were a lot of other things to see, some of the more notable ones were,

Urban Cultivator. Automated indoor herb gardening

Rocket. Compressed air system for dispensing whipped cream.

Steak stones. stone grills

Flex cool, portable refrigeration and freezers

Ozark River. Portable sinks

    Chicago itself was a great experience, we had been told their was a restaurant on every corner, this was an understatement, it seemed like the entire street level was restaurants, we spent a lot of time around millennial park and the art institute campus, found a great little market around the corner where we bought  most of our breakfasts for the trip. We enjoyed an evening at one of Chicago's highest rated  restaurants. and later had desert and cocktails 96 floors above the commotion of the city. All in all it was a whirlwind of a trip and worth every second and every penny. We intend to be back next year as we know we've only scratched the surface but for now we are pleased with how much we were able to see and do.