Eating at Conferences, Food Conferences Especially
I’m a wimp. I’m a complete wimp. I’ve been going to conferences all my adult life. Always the idea is that groups go out to sample the best of the restaurants in the city. Now that I’m doing food, not science, that expectation is upped by an order of magnitude.
Now it sounds just lovely. The hotel food is always so so. You want to see your friends. What better than a lovely, leisurely dinner at a good restaurant?
Except. Well except that by the evening my tongue has been working non stop since a 7:30 breakfast. Except that I’m not a fancy restaurant person anyway. Except that I fade about 8 or 9 o’clock anyway, since I like to get up really early at about 5. Except that all thousand of the other conference participants have identified the same half dozen restaurants. Except that the decibel level approaches that of a jet at takeoff. Except that consequently you are screaming and conversation becomes impossible. Except that if you’re foodies, you’re snapping away taking photos of the food.
Sounds stupid but I’m apt to opt for hotel service and the mini bar. The hotel food remains horrid (how can the Hilton in New Orleans not be able to do a shrimp po boy?) and the mini bar serves chiefly as anesthetic. But I’m in my robe, I’m mulling over wonderful conversations, and I’m going to bed relaxed and sober and ready for the next day.
Then I get home and kick myself. How could I, deep believer in seeking out every opportunity, have missed these opportunities to know the best restaurants in city X?
I think once in the distant past this would have merited the word “shucks.”
That conference is total sensory overload. It took me the better part of a week to recover so don’t have any regrets. I’m not a fancy restaurant girl either, so next time our paths cross, we can go seek out those unpolished gems together.
Ciao!
Judith
Thanks Judith. We have a date. It’s partly my own fault. I go for two nights, three days, have a presentation, have a zillion packages of stuff I can’t get in Mexico delivered to the hotel to be unpacked, sorted, repacked for return or to keep and I wonder why I’m not up for nights on the town. I have to be bats.