Special Report: The Delicious Life Takes On Vegas for the Pizza Expo

The week’s featured contributor is none other than food blogger Sarah Gim of The Delicious Life and a founder of foodie favorite, Tastespotting.  We sent Sarah on a special mission to the biggest pizza party of the year, evangelizing fresh mushrooms and taking in the scenery slice by slice- what follows is her personal account:

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll happen in Vegas? Obviously.

But so does the annual Pizza Expo.

The Pizza Expo isn’t a consumer event. It’s a tradeshow meant for “pizza industry” people to which the Mushroom Council invited me as a guest. “Pizza industry.” For some reason I thought I was going to be rubbing olive oily elbows with the likes of Vinnie, Vidi and Vici. Sure, the “industry” includes pizzeria owners (many of whom were from the East Coast) and purveyors of ingredients that go into pizza, but the industry also includes companies that make all the other things you might (or might not) see or experience in a pizza restaurant.

It was a lot to see, experience, absorb, and of course, taste. Vegas alone is a lot to take in two days, and you most certainly don’t “learn” anything except what it feels like to lose a thousand dollars in 10 seconds, but two days at the Pizza Expo taught me that pizza isn’t just crust, sauce, and cheese.

Top 10 Things I saw, experienced, learned, and tasted at the Pizza Expo that May or May Not Have Anything to Do with Mushrooms, Pizza, Vegas, Conferences, or Cher:

1. Canned mushrooms on pizza is a cardinal sin. Just ask the Caputo flour guys, in the space next to the Mushroom Council’s giant inflatable MushRoom, who made pizza for the Pope. I didn’t talk to the guys directly, but I would bet my life that the Pope’s pizza didn’t have canned mushrooms. Whether I actually did hear that from them or whether I am creating a big fat lie is a secret between me and God. The bottom line is, don’t ever put canned mushrooms on pizza.
2. Special diets, like they are in any food category, are big for pizza and getting bigger. Whether it’s a vanity diet like low-carb, a nutrition diet, or an allergy diet like gluten-free, the pizza industry is taking steps to accommodate these needs. I tasted gluten free pastas and pizzas baked on gluten free dough. Personally, I love pizzas that use a giant portabella mushroom as the “crust” – gluten-free and low carb!
3. What’s a pizza joint without chicken wings?!. There’s an unnatural but necessary pairing between pizza and wings, so there were quite a few exhibitors at the Expo with either sauces to make hot wings or pre-made products. One of them had the busiest exhibit at the Expo , with party music blaring from hidden speakers and “school girls” up on platforms bending down to serve wings. I didn’t try any.
4. Speaking of hot sauce, I walked away from the Expo with a number of hot sauce samples. I couldn’t figure out if it’s a cultural thing, a West Coast thing, or just a me thing, but I very blasphemously dump hot sauce on my pizza. Texas Pete’s is now in the running for 2nd Best Hot Sauce in My World (nothing will ever replace Sriracha).
5. I tried the Paris Pizza recipe from the Mushroom Channel with Boursin and Brie cheeses, fresh tomatoes, and portabella mushrooms. It’s delicious. I also tried a Spanish-style pizza with Romesco as the sauce base that was also delicious.
6. There were two pizza competitions that took place during the Expo. One stage had the World Pizza Games with a dough throwing contest and the other was the International Pizza Challenge, a March Madness-style full-bracketed contest for Best Traditional Pizza and Best Non-traditional Pizza.
7. Though I tasted more pizza in two days than I had eaten in an entire year before that, my favorite tastings were of all the pickled and marinated vegetables, mushrooms, and olives You can buy marinated mushrooms from the store (but not canned! see #1) but I have it in my mind now to make them at home in a much spicier rendition than any of the ones I tried there.  The big discovery for me, though, was a giant, bright green olive. It is now my obsession.
8. You never think about these things when you walk into a Chuck E. Cheese, your local Mom & Pop pizzeria or even get delivery from a national chain, but for every single thing that is required for a pizza restaurant (not just the pizza, but the restaurant), there is a company that makes it – animatronics and arcade games for kid-centered pizza places, pizza themes plush toys as prizes, costumes, light-up signs to put on delivery cars, “pagers.” I was in search of a plush pizza as a souvenir for my 2 year-old niece but never found one. She’s going to have to be happy playing with a red, green, and white conference badge.
9. The Mushroom Council left me an adorable Welcome Pack in my hotel with mushroom shaped chocolate truffles (was that pun intended? I think so!), a deck of mushroom playing cards, and a set of three small jars with magical stuff in them. One of the jars is sitting on my desk filled with white crystal. But remember, this is the PG rated mushroom council blog! It’s truffle salt and while once I refused to acknowledge truffles because they smelled like moldy dirt to me (even up to the day I left Vegas), I am now addicted. Thanks for the welcome pack, Mushroom Council. Thanks for nothing.

And the most important, lasting thing I learned at the Vegas Pizza Expo is…

There is more to pizza than just crust, sauce and cheese, but then again, at the end of the day, pizza’s beauty is in nothing more than the crust, sauce and cheese (with some mushrooms, of course).

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.