Smoke & Mirrors...and Sweet Corn

And for something completely different from Tom Karst et al covering the PMA Foodservice Conference in idyllic Monterey, home of the greatest fish tacos known to mankind. Psst, Tom--if memory serves...from the merry-go-round arcade, walk across Foam Street up the hill to the next parallel avenue, and turn right. A few doors down is a nondescript storefront, your destination. You can thank me later...

...I'm back from the surface of the sun, otherwise known as Las Vegas, Nevada, where we celebrated daughter's 21st birthday. My colleagues' stock-in-trade response to my visiting Sin City in July was, 'it's a dry heat'. Well, after it spit a little rain upon our arrival Sunday, it was a wet, hot, blinding synapse-fusing torpor that made me want to applaud any service worker out there than could form a coherent sentence without passing out, tongue lolling to the side.

The casinoes, of course, were 72 degrees & hopping, no recession here. Those with proper ventilation could hide the cigarette smoke with constantly-pumped oxygen and disinfectant. The others? The 'old Vegas' casinoes, including most of the Fremont Street properties, were in deep olfactory lockdown with low ceilings, a nasty human sweat-funk and a cloud of smoke reminiscent of a 1973 Foghat concert. Even with the allure of low minimums at the dice tables there, I couldn't bring myself to gamble at those locations for many reasons, most of them health-related.

I did come to the realization, however, that Vegas has morphed over the last ten years or so into a completely world-class culinary mecca. When I first encountered this town for the 1985 United Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Association convention, there was no Wolfgang Puck, no Emeril Lagasse, no Bobby Flay, no Todd English. There also has never been a UFFVA convention in Vegas since then---wait, there's not even a UFFVA anymore---because in '85 it was impossible to schedule a one-on-one meeting in that there were no portable cell phones back then & every produce salesman I knew was at the tables gambling.

But seeing that I've been sucked into the hype vortex of these celebrity chefs, for our splurge meal we dined at MGM's Craftsteak, brainchild of TV's Top Chef moderator/judge Tom Colicchio. It was quite an experience, especially coupled with the per course wine pairing. 'Kobe-style' beef. Marinated roasted quail. Our waiter Edgar was a font of knowledge, from the subtleties of fresh shiitake mushrooms, to the marriage of aged balsamic vinegar and watercress.

But he went a little over the edge when he started waxing poetic about the roasted sweet corn kernels that the buyers for Craftsteak only pick at the peak of the season. I thought to myself, which season? The Florida season? Georgia? Illinois? For my money, the absolute best sweet corn is around Iowa State Fair time in mid-August, right out of the field, so dynamic that it can be eaten raw, but a two-minute boil makes it perfect.

Poor Edgar didn't know that he had a produce man in his midst that at any moment could let loose & burst his bullroar bubble, but I chose to stay silent and let him go, realizing that out here, the style is as important as the substance.

I have to admit it was good corn. Copious amounts of butter and sea salt will make it so.

Later, with Congressional hearings on the horizon---

Jay