Hello from the Fancy Food Show, the trade show for the gourmet foods industry! The annual West coast show has moved from San Francisco to San Diego this year, well within driving range for this So Cal reporter. Here’s a few colorful photos from the first day of the convention.

The alchemists at Sweetfields turn organic flowers into edible candy creations made to adorn wedding cakes, pastries, and even drinks! These are coated with edible 24 karat gold dust. Their bright colors and luminescence are even more vivid in person.

Sweetfields even makes waterproof candied flowers that float in water!

Tsar Nicoulai Caviar produces fine caviar from American farm raised fish. Their sample bowl contains caviar from white sturgeon, salmon, whitefish, and trout. The orange jars of trout caviar in the foreground are designed by Chef Roland Passot. They burst in the mouth with subtle flavors of vanilla bean, kaffir lime, and brandy (from left to right).

The City of Hawthore hosts a holiday parade on December 1. Though I’m not sure which holiday falls this early in the month, the city nonetheless celebrates something…. your guess is as good as mine.

This year, the City added a barbecue contest and chili cookoff as a sideshow to the main festivities,  but one that Angelenos may want to check out. It’s a low key contest, geared to attract backyard cooks to come show off their skills. Want to cook? Want to judge? Drop me a line through the Contact Me form, and I’ll send you the email for the organizer.

According to the city’s website: 

“The parade begins at 138th and Hawthorne Blvd and travels north along Hawthorne to El Segundo. The route turns west to Grevillea Ave, and then north to the City Hall.”

The BBQ contest and chili cookoff will be held in the parking lot next to City Hall

4455 W. 126th Street
Hawthorne, CA 90250

The voice on the phone said, “Friday, maybe Saturday we’ll open. How’d you hear about us?”

Oh, it’s only the most anticipated pizza shop opening since Pizzeria Mozza if you pay any attention at all to Chowhound’s Los Angeles board.

Joe’s makes the definitive old school New York by-the-slice pizza**. In my teens and twenties, I devoted myself semi-monogamously to Joe’s when I still lived in my native New York City. No, that’s a lie. I’m a pizza slut. In Greenwich Village (at the time), there were other great pizza practitioners like Ben by Frank’s and John’s that served up notably distinct variations of New York style pizza, and I whored around with all of them.

In the mid `90’s,  I moved away to California, and I missed Joe’s Pizza like you’d miss your high school sweetheart just after you split off to different colleges many states apart. Inevitably, the distance makes the heart long for more geographically desirable loves. 

I stopped whining a long time ago about how you can’t get a good slice of New York pizza on the West coast, and felt proud of that closure in my life. But now comes Joe’s Santa Monica store, like running into ol-whutzer-butt at the high school reunion. I wonder what she’s like now…?

Joe’s Pizza
111 Broadway (West side of street, 1/2 block from Ocean Ave)
Santa Monica, CA
310-395-9222

** By “definitive old school New York by-the-slice pizza,” I mean in Manhattan. Brooklyn fans of DiFara Pizza can sit back down.

If you showed up at a barbecue contest, you might expect that you can eat some of the barbecue being submitted for judging. At many contests in California, that’s simply not the case, because vendors that sell to the public must pass Health Department inspection, and clear hurdles that most non-professional teams aren’t prepared to muster. The public disappointment in the lack of contest quality samples contributes to the demise of otherwise terrific events like the highly hyped BBQ’n at the Autry, which won’t return in 2008.

The organizers of the inaugural Blues, Brews and BBQ contest in the desert resort city of La Quinta, California chose to structure their event so the public can sample contest grade barbecue. Against a small assembly of our friends and fellow competitors, we scrapped our way to a second place overall (called the Reserve Grand Champion in BBQ contest jargon). During the vending session, Four Q also earned the coveted People’s Choice Award. Perhaps they liked the friendly trash-talking show between our team and our neighbors. Perhaps they liked our generous sample portions. Or maybe they just liked our meat and sauces.

We aim for consistently high placing in each of four meat categories, and this time, we actually managed to pull it off. It’s nice to take a first place in any one category, but it’s better to take a top five in all of them and place higher on the overall ranking.

Congratulations to the organizers of this first time event, which exceeded this competitor’s expectations for organizational skill, media coverage, and public attendance. With any luck, La Quinta will have us back next year.  And next time, we’ll be prepared to cook more food for Four Q’s fans.

Results 2007 Blues, Brews and BBQ - La Quinta, CA
Overall
1 Kyle Emery, Kyles Bubba Q
2 Neil Strawder, Four Q
3 Bill Emery, Brother Bills BBQ
4 Dan Powers, BBQ2DI4
5 Steph Franklin, Simply Marvelous
6 Mike Reimann, AZ Barbeque/Whiskey Ranch
7 Brian Kriesler, Blast Off BBQ
8 James Emery,  J and L Smokin BBQ
9 John Scott, Papas Smokhouse
10 Dale Ginos, When Pigs Fly

Brisket
1 Kyles Bubba Q
2 AZ Barbeque/Whiskey Ranch
3 Four Q
4 Brother Bills BBQ
5 Simply Marvelous
6 J and L Smokin BBQ
7 When Pigs Fly
8 Blast Off
9 Papas Smkehouse
10 BBQ 2DI4

Chicken
1 BBQ2DI4
2 J and L Smokin
3 Kyles Bubba Q
4 Blast Off
5  FourQ BBQ
6 Papa Smokhouse
7 Brother Bills
8 Simply Marvelous
9 AZ Barbeque/Whiskey Ranch
10 When Pigs Fly

Ribs
1 Kyles Bubba Q
2 Brother Bills BBQ
3 FourQ
4 Blast Off
5 BBQ 2DI4
6 Papa Smoke House
7 When Pigs
8 Simply marvelous
9 AZ Barbeque/Whiskey Ranch
10 J and L Smoking

Pork
1 Simply Marvelous
2 FourQ
3 AZ Barbeque/ Whiskey Ranch
4 When Pigs Fly
5 BBQ 2DI4
6 Kyles Bubba Q
7 Brother Bills
8 Papas Smokhouse
9 Blast Off
10 J and L Smokin