Today's Notables

A pass to the International Conference and Festival at CIA (Worlds of Flavor) costs $1,295 dollars (about 110,000 yen), making it a little out of reach for the average person. Because of space and tasting limitations, the conference is limited to 800 people at a time, which essentially limits participants to chefs from CIA, food researchers, food journalists, restaurant developers from hotel, restaurant and institutional foodservice, and others involved in food/ingredient purchasing. The 2 ? day event includes all food including dinner on the first and second day, and lunch on the third at a foodservice area called Marketplace, where Japan's team of top level chefs displayed their skills. The conference had lectures and food demonstrations broken up into several different formats such as general sessions, seminars, workshops and lectures for a total of 67 sessions.

The General Session took place in the main conference room that seated 350 people, with others who were not able to attend that session, viewing it on monitors in other classrooms. Other sessions took place concurrently in classrooms of the school, and those that registered for specific programs were accepted in order. I was asked to act as moderator of 4 sessions, contributing in a small way to the conference. Of those that I moderated, one was about "Japanese Casual Food" that took place in the main conference room so I had to speak English in front of many people. Needless to say, I was so nervous that my stomach was in knots. The other workshops and seminars generally had 20-30 participants with many providing demonstrations of food preparation which was very interesting and enjoyable to participants.

I must make special mention of one thing. All the chefs and moderators volunteered to participate in the conference and therefore, did not bring assistants, etc. CIA is a school registered as a non-profit school and therefore, the purpose is not-for-profit so they conduct annual fundraising of about 50 million dollars contributed by hotel and food manufacturers. For the purposes of this conference, twenty companies from Japan contributed about 800,000 dollars with a similar amount coming from the US side for a total of 2.5 million including exhibition fees, which is what the conference cost.

At Marketplace, the 39-member chef team from Japan, provided 3 separate tastings for 200 people using ingredients from sponsors. CIA staff and students were on hand to provide assistance to the chefs but with communication difficulties and lack of experience in preparation of Japanese food, it was just easier for the chefs to do everything from mise en place to taking food to the booth. The end result was a very real sense of perfection, eating delicious authentic Japanese food prepared start to finish by the best chefs that Japan has to offer. Even this is not usually possible in Japan.