At the National Restaurant Association Show, imagination and innovation appear in the form of plant

Columnist and restaurateur Matt Straus spent a few days checking out the latest offerings of the restaurant industry at the National Restaurant Association Show 2023 in Chicago, Ill., May 20-23.

Some Eagle readers may know before I say it here: I’m in the process of building a restaurant. I’ve been at it with this particular project a bit longer than I expected it to be, which means that I have been working on a sort of long-form design. When it started, almost two years ago, I’m sure I had plenty of ideas about the way certain things might look, which I no longer have. Some of the shifts I can remember, and some, probably, I have hardly noticed.

One very interesting moment in the process occurred recently because Bobby Powers, who owns and manages the multi-generational restaurant equipment store in Pittsfield called B&G Restaurant Supply, suggested to me a few weeks ago that I might want to attend the annual convention of the National Restaurant Association. As a couple of friends have said, it's the "other NRA." This one never gets into debates about the causes of death. But maybe it should. Terrible food kills even more people than guns do.

Two weekends ago, for the first time, I spent a couple of days walking through three unspeakably massive rooms, full of stoves, refrigerators, ice machines, dishwashers, pots and pans, aprons, restaurant furniture, takeout packaging, software companies, hot dog carts and nacho bars, aged meat displays, pastries baked from frozen, more espresso machines and coffee roasters than you could shake a swizzle stick at. Also, there was an entire section dedicated to "natural foods," which, except for some cheese on gluten-free pasta, was virtually all vegan, and heavily focused on plant-based meat substitutes.

One booth after another in this section, perhaps 25 or 30 in total, was serving up chicken nuggets, bratwurst, bacon, burgers, pieces of steak and imitation "wagyu" beef (which was prepared to resemble braised meat). Every last bite of it was comprised of some combination of different beans. Soy protein was of course amply represented, but so too were chickpeas, yellow peas, fava beans and others. Two companies were making omelettes and poached "eggs," runny yolks and all, with products made from mung beans.

Whether you feel utterly compelled by these foods, a passing curiosity about them, or outright revulsion, it would be hard to make the case that any other aspect of the show was half as exciting or imaginative. Sure, automatic coffee machines represent a kind of advance from more manual ones. And there's no question that the food industry seems increasingly interested in electric cooking rather than using gas, as was evidenced by the growing preponderance of induction cooktops. The enormous section devoted to products from particular states around the country could have been lifted from any decade in the last 50 or 60 years, and featured companies that sell well-known ingredients: aged beef, chicken wings, salami, and nuts among them.

But the developments in meat and dairy substitutes made that section of the room feel almost as though there was a whole other show happening in that wing. Attendees packed the aisles and devoured offerings not just from Beyond Meat, and Impossible Foods, but from companies making pizza dough with chickpeas, eggs from mung beans, chicken, pork and beef from any and seemingly every legume in the known universe. As many as 50 or 60 companies presented a dizzying range of foods, from coconut-based yogurt to slices of "meat," cut from seared filets of cultured soy and wheat; which, astonishingly, bore more than a slight resemblance to filet mignon, in terms of look, flavor and texture.

Some things that were not at the convention: products made by hand and in small quantities. As you can imagine from the description I’ve offered, there were no small farmers and no artisan cheesemakers — not that many giant manufacturers, of every product from steak knives to Monterey Jack, aren't tempted these days to call themselves artisanal. There is some irony, perhaps, in the growing use of that word, at the same time that the more "progressive" food producers are setting up shop at huge conventions next to Nestle and Tyson.

Not surprisingly, after all of the meatless feasting, on one bite after another of deep-fried yellow pea protein and soy isolate, I didn't feel great. I was lucky that it wasn't more than a 20-minute walk from the convention center to Chinatown, where I settled in for some expertly-made hot and sour soup and fresh green pea shoots in garlic over rice.

Matt Straus is the owner of Heirloom Café, a San Francisco restaurant, and recently bought the former Williamsville Inn in West Stockbridge. He has worked at renowned restaurants in Boston and Los Angeles. He was named one of the top sommeliers of 2011 by Food and Wine Magazine.