Restaurant & Foodservice expo offers fast but not always fresh

Peeking into the kitchen of a Manhattan restaurant might spoil most students’ appetites, but watching the well-organized food service industry operate may surprisingly feel just as discomforting.

From Feb. 28 to March 2, sample seekers and restaurateurs alike convened at the Javits Center for the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show of New York. Hundreds of booths highlighted ingredients from foie gras to pizza toppings, and kitchen equipment like deep fryers and espresso machines. The massive exhibition demonstrated a trend towards pre-prepared foods that, while making the business of food simpler, upon sampling often paled in comparison to fresher products.

At this industry event, the most salient development in the food world appeared to be culinary outsourcing. This does not necessarily signify a shift of production and services overseas—instead, culinary outsourcing means that products are made outside of the individual outlets where they are sold. When students go to a local coffee shop and sink their teeth into a “fresh scone,” they might not realize that their treat potentially originated in a warehouse miles away.

In fact, pre-prepared, homogenized products might be more prevalent at Columbia University dining facilities than students think. According to Columbia’s 2010 Green Report Card that lists “local processors,” Columbia purchases goods from “Rockland Bakeries.” Rockland Bakery’s booth at the exhibition featured a display of largely unappetizing, stale, and plasticized breads and tarts baked for wholesale.

The show featured a definitive division between two categories of purveyors: those providing a fast and easy product and those providing a quality product. More often than not, the former offer cheap solutions to problems like serving muffins to thousands of customers a day. At high volume college eateries, such situations pose a significant quandary to limited kitchens, necessitating a sacrifice in quality for economy.

From sleazy to magnificent to downright strange, the collection of companies at the exhibition provided more free samples than a horde of hungry Columbians could stomach. One offering did, however, stand out from the plethora of industrial bakeries.

Usually associated with super-luxury, foie gras—or engorged duck or goose liver—is an item students rarely purchase. But Hudson Valley Foie Gras, based in Ferndale, New York, stood out from nearby booths for its attention to quality and value. While foie gras is beyond the average student budget, Hudson Valley encourages thrifty students to try their sliced duck prosciutto for a reasonably priced, exotic bacon alternative. Or simply order a two-pound bucket of duck fat, an unconventional substitute for peanut butter on a slice of bread, on their website.

Taking a back-stage look at the restaurant business did not reveal stomach-turning sanitation failures, but rather the homogenization of foodstuffs and the widespread use of wholesale goods. If anything, the event may prompt some students to search for eateries that sell products made in-house—at least until their next trip to Starbucks.