Although
food and beverages are everywhere at Market, food is obviously not the central
focus; buying and selling goods is the central focus. Having said that though, we managed to find
some interesting and wonderful food at Market today. We started out again at Accent Focus for
their Starbucks and Tazo coffee and teas and premium cookies. I had an Earl Grey again with an oatmeal and
cranberry cookie and a chocolate brownie.
We were
invited to lunch at the Spa Association’s lunch talk by Patti Biro and Alan
Shane. Patti had written the article on
Suzette’s Garden Gate Day Spay several years ago when it won the best Green Spa
of the year award. Alan is the President
of the Spa Association. It was an informative
discussion about how to merchandise retail in spas, which is one of the goals Suzette
is trying to accomplish on this trip. The other is going to be looking for interesting
products to use to re-model her kitchen and our kitchen at the Home show and
surface shows starting tomorrow.
 |
| Patti Brio is on the right |
We walked several
floors of showrooms between breakfast and lunch and then again after lunch before
going to Building B , which is mostly furniture, for the 3:00 presentation of
the color of the year by a representative from Pantone. Pantone’s color of the year is Marsala. As it turned out the lady I sat next to at
lunch was a color consultant to many of the appliance companies. After the lecture she discussed with us in
greater detail the process used to arrive at the color of the year. From the lecture might think that pantone
drives the process to arrive a the color of the year but after the lecture, the
consultant made it clear that the manufacturers, whose lead time Is longer than
a few months, really drive the process. Think
about leather upholstery for cars and colored metal for refrigerators.
We then went
to Eurøstyle furniture and sat in a wonderful executive office chair that I
liked very much and found out that they were having a Swedish dinner at 5:00 so
we looked at a few additional furniture lines in Building B such as Fjord, a Norwegian
design house that makes a lovely zero gravity recliner. We saw lots of beautiful leather chairs.
Finally a
Thai caterer arrived at around 5:30 with the food and serving trays. She brought Janssons Frestelse (a baked dish
of herring, potatoes, onions and butter and cream), Swedish meatballs, ham, and
a wonderful beet salad make with beets, apples and cream and an even better cucumber
salad made with seeded cucumbers vinegar, a little sugar and fresh dill.
I had an
interesting experience. As I was helping
myself to food I met Trig Lilljestad?, who was obviously Swedish and also
obviously one of the owners or officers of the American division and an
organizer of the dinner party, to whom I was able to speak a sentence of Swedish
that he understood. Myke Bra.
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| Lower right:Swedish meatball, Upper right:Janssons Frestelse Upper left:beet salad Lower left:cucumber salad |
We drank Stella
Artois beer and shots of Absolut Swedish vodka.
So we enjoyed a genuine Swedish food experience and I think I shall
order one of Eurøstyle’s office chairs.
After dinner
we went to the Plaza between the three showroom buildings where music was being
played by a trio o women violinists and beer and wine was being served to the
attendees.
Suzette got
the DJ at the Eurøstyle party to play and we danced to ABBA. Then we danced again to a DJ rapper in the
Plaza. Sort of big night for us.
Bon Appétit
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