FHM2007 - KLCC - 22-25 Aug

I visited FHM2007 with my friend, Lavender, yesterday. It was huge with over two hundred participating companies. The participants came from all corners of the world, Egypt, Taiwan, Japan, Italy, Germany, Australia, Malaysia and lots and lots of countries.

The Exhibition was the 9th Malaysian International Exhibition of Food, Drinks, Hotel, Restaurant & Food service Equipment, supplies, services and related technology. The exhibition was housed in 5 halls.

There were more than half dozen coffee exhibitors. We sampled the famous illy coffee which was at it's best, then we tried Bon cafe which was pretty good too. Then we had latte, it was really very good - unfortunately we didn't notice the brand, by the time we saw coffex, we were spewing coffee out our ears and noses. We were so caffeine intoxicated that we were feeling queasy because we had too much coffee on an empty stomach.

Initially, we thought that we'd have a quick run through the exhibition and go for lunch, we were shocked at the mass of exhibitors. Every turn was something exciting, every stop was food sampling, every corner was something new to learn. Wow! What a gastronomic journey! We never expected to 'learn' so much about the different types of food, equipment, raw cooking material, cooked foods, etc, etc.

We were very excited over the Japanese cooking demonstration. The Japanese chef demonstrated 'Spider roll". It's maki sushi rolled inside out (like the California roll) filled with fried soft shell crab with it's 'legs' sticking out of both ends of the roll. Usually, Japanese restaurants roll the rice in sesame seeds or Ebiko, but at FHM, they introduced a new product - Konbu sheet. It's thin and fine like the nori but it's nothing like nori. It is pale yellow in color and has pattern akin to tiger stripes. There was plenty to go round for sampling and it was delicious. By the way, just for your information the konbu sheet is nothing like the seaweed that we use for cooking miso soup or stewing.

The chef then made a futomaki and rolled more than half a dozen ingredients in it. That was delicious too. In fact we spent most of our time at the Japanese exhibition area.

We sampled Matcha tea - green tea made from matcha powder which we thought it's consistency was too weak. Then we sampled Sake - Ooooo....it had a fresh fruity flavour, actually it was excellent. Even my friend Lavender who's resided in Japan for many years commented that the sake was excellent.

We went on to sample Maguro which is bluefin tuna (sashimi style). It only took a dip of shoyu
to enhance the fresh and delicious flavour of the Maguro. There were a group of students from Taylors college (T-shirt) who were enjoying the Maguro plate after plate. The Japanese exhibitor just continued to dish them out. They were very hospitable and polite. Lavender and I took their catalogue to place orders because the prices were cheap compared with those sold at the supermarket.

When we reached the end of the Japanese booths, we were offered O-konomiyaki, a type of savoury egg pancake. The Japanese man was mouthing the word O-ko-no-mi-ya-ki and teaching everyone who passed his booth to pronounce the word O-ko-no-mi-ya-ki!! I thought he was very funny and wanted to stay on to observe but Lavender quickly dragged me away.

By the time we finished visiting all the exhibition booths Lavender and I were so, so full that we decided not to go for lunch, which was supposed to be part of the day's agenda.

I realized that I'm not a true blue blogger yet because I didn't bring my camera with me. I could have used my phone but....I didn't want the hassle of my phone lagging because I chose to be trigger happy for the day. Oh well...this is a very wordy blog....what can I say....I've now decided to bring my camera everywhere. I've learnt my lesson, after all, as they say pictures paint a thousand words!