IFBC 2017: Sacramento Soliloquy

In the morning light of late September, the dome of the California State Capitol building looked like a fancy cake topper made of alabaster fondant with a chocolate cap. I had arrived the night before for Foodista's International Food Blogger Conference and was walking to breakfast at the Fox and Goose Public House, not far from my hotel.

Morning at the California State Capitol

Walking down 10th Street early on a Saturday morning was a rare treat for me, being from car-choked L.A. I envisioned how the traffic would have already picked up back home at this hour, with the throngs in trendy neighborhoods headed for breakfast, shopping, and other weekend pursuits. Here, I had the sidewalks all to myself, except for volunteers from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention who were busily setting up a coffee kiosk and other exhibits, along with a barrage of balloons for their event on the Capitol lawn.

When I reached the Fox and Goose, I was surprised to find it fairly empty except for about five people, but it was only about 7:45 in the morning. I settled myself in the empty patio that girded the front of the pub. I had never had a "full English" before and was intrigued by the cacophony of flavors that it promised with eggs, sautéed mushrooms, bangers and bacon, roasted tomato, and beans.

Solitary, man: Enjoying the quiet at the
Fox and Goose Public House
in Sacramento's historic R Street District.

As I waited for my meal, luxuriating in the quiet and gentle glow of the morning sun, a woman who had just parked across the street asked me if the blue Honda belonged to me. I told her that it did not, and she said that there was a mouse roaming inside of the car. We laughed and she went into the pub, where I could hear her asking within if anyone had a blue Honda. Apparently nobody did, and the woman came out again and told the story to a friend who had just arrived. They went inside and when I was busily jotting notes down for this post, someone got into the blue Honda and drove away. Hopefully, they weren't startled by their tiny passenger while the car was in motion!

Bangers tend to be softer than most sausages, with their tender pork filling. I learned that in World War I, the filling was augmented with wheat rusks to make the meat go further. They may seem a bit bland at first, but are savory enough to complement and be complemented by the piquant flavor of the Heinz baked beans, the eggs, bacon, and the tomato and mushrooms. I also had a side of miniature berry-studded scones with some sunny homemade lemon curd, "for pudding," as they say across the pond.

After this hearty start to the day, I walked back around in a bit of a circle to the Hyatt Regency to prepare for the day's sessions. Sacramento is known as the "City of Trees" and I enjoyed the verdant cityscape, walking past charming houses and apartments that were set in unusually lush greenery for an urban environment.

The full English breakfast at the Fox and Goose

When I returned to Capitol Park, I heard bagpipers. Men and women were decked out in kilts, practicing for what I found out was a California Firefighters Memorial Ceremony also taking place at Capitol Park that day. As I headed into the park, distractedly taking a photo of the very large redwood in my path, I head a voice say, "You have to take a picture of the Dior cedar."

I turned to see a Bruce Boxleitner look-alike, who appeared to have been jogging. "It's over here - it has a portal." I followed the guy over to the tree, and saw the sign that read, "Deodar Cedar, Cedrus deodars. Native Region: China." I asked him what he meant by a portal, and he took a four-inch long quartz crystal out of his pocket.

Gigantic deodar cedar in Capitol Park

He indicated a small triangular space where the branches had grown and fused together and began trying to lob the crystal through the opening. I asked him where he thought the "portal" led, hoping that it didn't eventually lead to impaling one of our skulls with the airborne crystal as we stood under the tree. Finally, he stopped trying.

"I just like to think that it leads somewhere," he laughed.

The tree was truly an impressive specimen, as was the redwood. "Bruce" pointed out the other gargantuan trees, as if I could miss them. I thanked him for the mini-tour of his ad hoc arboretum and made my way back to the hotel.

The IFBC sessions I attended that day were somewhat geared toward more solitude, namely writing, which requires a certain lonerdom. When I left the convention center, I was undecided as to whether I should drive or get an Uber to Biba, and almost went to dinner in what I wore to the conference. But I had this feeling that I should get dressed up a bit, so went back to my room to engage Uber - which I failed at due to a faulty connection with my phone - and to change into the one nice dress I brought with me. I decided to drive and found that the restaurant was only about eight minutes away.

Grilled salmon at Biba

After parking my car, I walked into Biba, expecting the standard interior of an upscale Italian restaurant. I was really glad that I had changed into my dress, because I was standing at the edge of a dimly-lit room with only about ten tables and a piano bar. Older couples, the men in sport coats, seemed to freeze, like in the movies. I felt like Ferris Bueller and his pals trying to get into a swanky restaurant and was considering introducing myself as "Abby Froman, the Sausage Queen of Chicago," when the surprisingly friendly hostess whisked me into the larger dining room, which was considerably brighter, noisier, and full of all kinds of people in various types of dress, cheerfully eating their dinners.

My server was a friendly older gentleman who had been at Biba's for nearly 20 years. He was pretty busy with other tables as well, but very helpful and knowledgeable about the menu. He even offered to bring me half portions of salad and pasta since I couldn't eat full helpings and did not have a refrigerator for leftovers - when did they start taking those out of hotel rooms?

Fill-your-own lemon cannoli and 
Greek salad snack at Corti Brothers

I don't have any halfway acceptable photos of this experience. The room was lit, but dimly so. Elegant for a meal, not great for cell phone cameras. And after a long day at IFBC and around town, my battery was flagging.

So, I simply enjoyed the grilled salmon special, a generous filet resting on a raft of wilted spinach and roasted turnips that had a delightfully rustic look with their untrimmed roots. A pool of corn puree bedaubed the plate below this assemblage, brightening the dish with both flavor and hue. The half orders that preceded this - grilled vegetable Insalata Siciliana and ravioli with prosciutto cotto, topped with buttery chanterelle mushrooms - were like a meal by themselves, but I wanted to try as many things as I could.

Conti Brothers is an institution, having been in the same spot on Folsom Boulevard since 1947. The whole place looks a very well-preserved toy supermarket from the 1950s, except it's real. The shelves look as if they are straightened regularly on the quarter-hour, and are stocked with a cornucopia of exotic but genuine ingredients to please the most curious or persnickety of chefs. The deli is famous for its sandwiches - I was saving my appetite for Biba, but in retrospect, should have had one! And the staff is courteous and helpful. Corti Brothers was truly a throwback to old-fashioned grocery stores, but with the modern-day consciousness of buying and selling what is fresh, local, and just plain good.

A backlog of bevvies and bread at a live
blogging session at IFBC

I did need to have a small lunch of some kind, and the DIY cannoli kits in the deli looked amazing. The sunny yellow filling, which I scooped with a plastic knife into the lightest, and crispest cannoli shells ever, had a subtle sweetness and a balanced, natural lemon flavor. I figured that, alongside a Greek salad of feta, cucumbers and tomatoes would hold me until dinner at Biba. I also stocked up on sweets to bring home as presents, including gingersnaps and springerle cookies made by the Sisters of St. Benedict in Indiana - not local, but indicative of unusual products at Conti Brothers.

Later that afternoon, there was an live food and wine blogging session at IFBC, where local growers, wine reps, entrepreneurs, and other spokespersons showed off their wares for about five minutes at a time as we bloggers listened, took pictures, tweeted, and most importantly, tasted. It was like a wacky game show where we had to scarf or swig numerous samples of food and drink while digesting a lot of information very quickly. It was a lot of fun, but kind of hectic.

The company reps were great sports about this activity. IFBC is the only food blogger conference I've attended so far, and I'm guessing that they may have done presentations like this before. But as novel and energizing as the live blogging was, it might have been more enjoyable if we had more than 50 minutes total and if each table only experienced five or six vendors rather than ten.

At IFBC's live blogging session, California Strawberries
featured local farmers on their labels.

I didn't mean to be antisocial this year at IFBC. I think that I just needed to process things more quietly this year. The takeaway from my largely solitary experience at this year's conference is that the act of fully appreciating food takes a lot of time and attention. Ambience is not limited to fine dining. Every occasion of interacting with food has a level of ambience, even when you are eating a clumsily-assembled lemon cannoli while sitting in a breezy patio in front of a grocery store.

The best thing about being a food blogger is that one becomes adept at deeply experiencing food with new eyes, ears, nose, hands, and tastebuds in order to impart its story to the world. The daily routines of shopping, cooking, and eating take on new dimensions as we work to tell our stories. And while the actual writing of a blog demands solitude, gathering the information can be either solitary or communal. And, I have found, it is often the shared experiences that are the most nourishing.

Not just olives anymore:Lindsay's new
nut butters at IFBC live blogging session.

I brought some of my IFBC swag and a few presents to my sister’s house, where my youngest nephew Kenzo was the only one at home. I gave him a bag of chocolate-studded Nibby Cookies from Andrae’s Bakery and some blueberry powder that I thought he could use in one of his famous smoothies. 

I showed him the sample vial of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena and said it was for his parents, but that he could try it if he wanted to. A budding chef on his own, Kenzo didn’t hesitate. He cut the tiny plastic “bottle” open with a scissors and poured half of its contents into a small dish. He took a package of tiny orbs of burrata out of the refrigerator, dipped one into the vinegar and took an appraising bite.

“It’s good,” he said. And coming from a 13-year-old, that means a lot. I look forward to watching him come into his own as a cook and an enthusiastic lover of food. Maybe someday, he might even write about it.