SCENE : The Show of Shows

The Western Restaurant Show--that’s where you go to sense the throbbing pulse of today’s restaurant world. Companies with something to sell to restaurateurs filled more than 1,800 booths at the L.A. Convention Center during the Aug. 26-28 event, sponsored by the California Restaurant Assn.

That’s a lot of booths, but a scientific test revealed that a person with a note pad could walk down every last aisle of the convention hall without bumping into anybody, stopping only to sample the occasional Southwestern jerk enchilada or slice of ostrich salami, in just under an hour and a quarter.

It wasn’t all products. The show also had discussions of restaurant owners’ concerns: sanitary conditions, employee motivation, bottom-line stuff. Something that looked like a bingo game was going on, only it was based on restaurant facts (none of the guys carrying cellular phones was playing it). There was a line at the back-and-neck massage machine.

“I’m selling this to Little Caesar,” a salesman told a customer in a confiding tone; it was fruit sorbet frozen into a waxed cone so you can push the sorbet up as you nibble on it.

“That’s not out yet,” another apologetically informed a customer. “It’s a holiday blend.” Presumably the holiday was Christmas, because the product was cranberry-orange peel rice.

Every Western Restaurant Show seems to have at least one totally impressive robotic food preparation machine, which may or may not turn out to catch on in the restaurant world. One year it was a jukebox-sized machine that took water and dried mashed potato and turned them into things that looked like French fries and tasted like mashed potatoes.

This year it was Rheon’s Cornucopia KN300. Like the factory machines that extrude small cakes with filling already in the dough, this “Flourless Encrusting Unit” could turn out up to 800 pounds an hour of sausage-shaped pieces of ground meat, fish or potato with a savory filling already inside. Rheon suggested cabbage or macaroni salad for a filling.