Last month I was finally able to cross something off my (nonexistent) bucket list, well two technically things. I attended the NRA Food Show in Downtown Chicago. If you’re unfamiliar with what it is, the first thing you should know is NRA is the National Restaurant Association and not the one dealing with Rifles. Makes more sense that way. The food show consists of everything you could possibly imagine for running a business. It’s literally everything from drinks to food, heaters to beer taps, and companies helping with advertising to menus. The show takes place at McCormick Place Convention and to say this place is huge is completely an understatement.
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| Andrew Zimmern at the NRA 2014 Food Show |
The show itself was amazing. Every part of the convention center was dedicated to the food and it was incredibly to see new products and trends. It’s a perfect place to try new products because everyone there is giving out samples. The first day there for the show, we barely spent money on food since we just kept eating. A lot of companies were also giving out reuseable bags, so I’m now set for a giant shopping trip! My favorite thing there (other than rice krispie treat ice cream) was listening to Andrew Zimmern speak. He was discussing sustainability with our foods and mentioned a company called Hampton Creek. They’ve developed a plant based egg that they use in mayonnaise and cookie dough, but will eventually be selling the not-quite-an-egg egg products itself. The mayonnaise is available at Whole Foods if you’re interested. Apart from that, I’ve loved the show so much I wanted to go back every year now.
Chicago itself was also a new experience for me. I didn’t get to do anything really because the reason I went to the food show was because it was my last class for my degree. So in reality I need another trip to Chicago to get the full experience. What I did experience, I rather enjoyed. I’ve always loved the idea of a city, but I came to realize it’s good for a short time. I loved walking everywhere and I managed to find a CityTarget. Whenever you’re in a city that has one, locate it right this minute because that is the coolest thing I’ve seen. They actually have an elevator and an escalator specifically for your shopping basket. The outside is rather adorable too. We went to Gino’s one day for dinner that was literally the best thing I’ve eaten. I'm typically not a fan of pizza unless it's Jet's or homemade, but this stuff was just amazing. We even tried to bring our leftovers back on our five hour drive back. If you couldn’t guess, we were not successful at all.
There were only three things that I was not fond of while in Chicago, the first being that Sunday, literally everything closed by 6pm. Where I live everything closes by 9 on Sundays and I will never take that for granted again. Secondly, everything there makes you feel so claustrophobic. It’s cute, but I greatly missed an actual subdivision with space. Lastly, since everything was so close together, it’s surprisingly easy to get lost. I always had the map on my phone pulled up so I knew I was going the right way. We got so lost trying to get to our hotel, it was a constant joke the easiest way to confuse a Michigander was to stick them in a big downtown city like Chicago.
That was everything from my weekend trip to Chicago! I wish I took more pictures to share, but I was in such awe over the whole thing. Being to the food show for a class made me miss out on the Chicago experience though. We planned on hitting the typical tourist places like parks and aquariums, but we simply had no time. I've promised myself that I need to go back and I'd love to hear of places to go. If we were able to read all this was, then congratulations! Below are links to things I mentioned if you want to check them out more
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