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The Stew

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By JEFF HOUCK

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 10, 2008

CHEWING UP FLORIDA

If you've never attended the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Show in Orlando, I would highly recommend doing so next year. I attended this year's event on Saturday and, luckily, remembered two things I learned in 2007: Bring walking shoes and a strong stomach.

The shoes are necessary to cover the 650 or so booths featuring all kinds of restaurant equipment, new products, services and cooking demonstrations. For three days each year, the gigantic Orange County Convention Center becomes a Pentagon of Schmooze. Vendors come from across the country to participate.

The strong stomach is required if you plan to subject yourself to an onslaught of food that shouldn't really mix at one time. You also need to stomach the distasteful way people elbow each other for free samples. Some people will do just about anything for a toothpick full of sirloin. Or a free chicken wing. Especially if the women doing the dispensing look like Hugh Hefner's girlfriends. The hovering for food samples is staggering in both audacity and commitment. Imagine Costco. Multiply by infinity. People are greedy pigs.

A few notes from the show:

•The United States has a pizza team that performs gymnastics and freestyle acrobatics with pizza dough, competes in pizza stretching and making time trials and, well, just being cool. Its stated mission: "To bring the world's attention to the talent and camaraderie of the pizza industry." Pizza globetrotters? Team members have their own trading cards and a mustachioed mascot. And plastic practice "dough" that they spin like Frisbees.

•David Bragg of MaskUs.com, a mascot company in Chula Vista, Calif., told me that pizza mascots are popular now. His pizza costumes come with Velcro toppings that can be rearranged. Sombrero-topped costumes are hot, too, because of a surge in Mexican restaurants. One fact I hadn't expected to hear: Belgians love Donald Duck.

•Sandra Sue Dent, retail services director at Historic Bok Sanctuary gardens and tower in Lake Wales, was hunting for a provider of shade-grown organic gourmet coffee for the Blue Palmetto Cafe at the attraction. Dent was very proud of the restaurant's eclectic menu. I met Sandra as she was chatting with Linda Mazzone of Latitude 23.5 Coffee Roasters of Sarasota. Holly Erez, Latitude's vice president, says the company is doing well.

•Coming soon to Carollwood: Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery sports bar. The nine-state, Scottish-themed chain already has a location on Drew Street in Clearwater. How best to describe the servers' uniforms? Think McHooters.

•Amanda Kulaw, academic services coordinator for the University of South Florida's school of hotel and restaurant management, touted the program, which is located in Sarasota. It's the first USF school located off the main Tampa campus and the first hospitality school on the west coast of Florida.

Why is it there? Because Sarasota's restaurant industry showed great interest while Tampa's did not. Well-done, Tampa.

•The "green" concept, which was all the rage last year, still holds on. At the Green Restaurants Pavilion, Chris Nelson of the Fort Wayne, Ind., company Intek was displaying a food steamer he says saves $6,500 in water each year.

Laura Bolser, marketing director for accessories provider Front of the House, showed off the eco-friendly line of utensils, tongs, plates and food picks made with bamboo and palm wood.

And, for restaurants that must deal with maintaining grease traps, Roebic Laboratories of Orange, Conn., was promoting its treatment that uses concentrated bacteria to devour grease.

•Great flavors were there in abundance. One of my favorites was Coffee Bark, a treat that combines toffee and chocolate with ground, roasted green coffee beans. The flavor was like an earthy, crispy chocolate bar. (To order, go online to CoffeeBark.com.)

•Best in Show award went to The Glass Flipper, a device that allows caterers or banquet operators to flip entire racks of clean drinking glasses at one time so that they can be filled with ice or beverages. The device eliminates the need for restaurant workers to flip each glass individually by hand after they've just been cleaned in the dishwasher. Former Tampa resident Lee Greenburg is among the people involved in getting the product noticed in the restaurant industry.

DINING WITH DAVE

I had a chance last week to join Flavor columnists Jaden Hair and Michelle and Greg Baker for an olive oil tasting and cocktail party with Food Network celebrity Dave Lieberman at Ceviche Tapas Bar & Restaurant on South Howard Avenue.

Lieberman was in town as part of a tour to promote olive oil from Spain, specifically Goya, Star and Pompeian brands. The gathering of about 100 people at Ceviche featured such tapas treats as garlic and idiazabal mashed potato croquettes, fried cauliflower with pimenton and chorizo and piquillo pepper bites. It didn't take long for the group to run through the white sangria.

Before the gathering, I recorded a Table Conversations podcast with Lieberman about cooking with olive oil. You can hear the interview by going online to my blog, The Stew. I have the mashed potato recipe there as well.

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