Touring the Food Services of America Food Product Show [Slideshow]

You didn't know you could get purple potatoes from FSA, did you? (Photo: MvB)

Sweet potato fries (Photo: MvB)

Sweet sizzling bacon! (Photo: MvB)

Tillamook! Our stomachs are restless until your cheese rests in them. (Photo: MvB)

It's like a scene from Rembrandt's painting of the FSA food products show. (Photo: MvB)

Chef demonstration! (Photo: MvB)

These are not sample-sized, sadly. (Photo: MvB)

I forget what makes this better than any smoothie you've ever tried, but I was told it was. (Photo: MvB)

Fruits of the sea, from a local vendor (Photo: MvB)

Need a crowd for your fresh fruits display? Just add chocolate. (Photo: MvB)

PausePlayPlayPrev|Next

“Have a good show,” is what they tell you at Food Services of America‘s food products show, I discovered. Or, “Have a great show.” But there was room for variation. A chef finished up his live demonstration with, “Thank you. Godspeed. Keep it real.”

If you have eaten in a restaurant, school, or cafeteria, you probably have FSA to thank. They’re the distributor that links food makers with food eaters, “serving customers in 15 states from 9 regional distribution centers.” You’ve seen their trucks around. Their Deal Me In food products show is being held down at the Washington State Convention Center (yesterday and today), so I finagled an entrance to see what a food products show entails.

While on the one hand it is a glorious smorgasbord of sampling delights, the net take-away is that, as always, if you want to keep a little romance, keep the lights down low. So much breading! So much frying! A baked food product demonstrator holds up a large plastic sleeve filled with a greenish goo, explaining that you can make mini-cakes with this for about $0.75 per, and sell them by the slice. The goo comes in flavors.

A little repetition is bound to creep in. The Krusteaz man says, “It’s our pumpkin filling in the mix. So we took our mix and added pumpkin filling.” People try a new, sweetened pancake and badger their colleagues to take a bite.

Coldplay and Arcade Fire played overhead, shrubbery lined the walls, and a flashing red LED palm tree greeted visitors at the entrance to the booth pavilion. An iPad is raffled away hourly. It’s a parade of famous names: Tyson’s, Tillamook, Pillsbury…but also of more local vendors who have made the grade when it comes to supplying the immense demand. Tabasco wants you to try their new Buffalo Wing flavor. What makes it Buffalo Wing-y? Maybe the garlic, says the booth person, inspecting the ingredients.

An chef live-demonstrates a Cuban sandwich to approximately no one. You can also buy something for $18.69, which is practically giving it away. Did you know there are sweet potato tortilla chips now? Sadly, the fresh fruits and vegetables aisle is the least crowded, but a fountain of dipping chocolate has people clustered around. Coffee from Tony’s Coffee tastes pretty much like you’d imagine Tony’s coffee would taste.