It hadn’t started out as a very auspicious morning.  The cappuccino that I drank in the café next to my hotel was like so many others I had tried in Paris all week — great foam on top, but thin, weak coffee underneath.

During SIAL, I had a conversation with a coffee professional whose opinion I thought I could trust. I had confided to him that I was having a hard time finding a decent cup of coffee in the city and he made a face. “Le café  dans les cafes a Paris, c’est un catastrophe!” (Loosely translated, he said the coffee served in cafes is a catastrophe and shouldn’t be inflicted upon anyone. And according to his expression, animals either.) But he suggested that I visit Café Soluna, since he felt it was one of the few places that I could find a cup of coffee that I would enjoy.

Café Soluna is tucked into a small space on the rue de l’hotel de Ville. This small street parallels the Seine on the right bank.  Getting there was a short walk from the Latin Quarter, walking past Notre Dame and the tiny Saint Chappelle, which has the most remarkable stained glass windows I have ever seen.

The narrow space is divided into two rooms. The front has a several small tables, a retail counter behind which are about a dozen acrylic bins containing freshly roasted coffee beans, and in the corner is a small 2-kilogram roaster that had beans cooling in the tray when my party of four entered.

The back room contains an espresso bar with stools for sitting and some comfortable chairs and tables for lounging and enjoying drinks. The coffee is fresh-roasted daily, and all of the beans come from individual plantations. I asked if it was possible to get several different press pots to try. (more…)

There were certainly plenty of drink choices here at SIAL. Coffee and tea, fruit juices, water, soft drinks, energy drinks, wine and spirits. Aisle after aisle — and there were hundreds of aisles — showcased bottles, cans, bags and boxes of beverages.  The trick, of course, was standing out in the crowd.

My favorites were the fruit drinks from West Africa. Unusual flavors, such as baobab, soursop and tamarind, are interesting to try. I got some samples to bring home to the lab to see how we might use them in some drinks. I’m thinking about a white chocolate hibiscus drink. I wonder how it will taste … ?

I always knew the Mont Blanc booth was popular at trade shows, but I never expected this.  I arrived this morning to set up for the final day of SIAL and discovered that, overnight, someone had stolen the blender we use to make our frozen drinks!

It is the first time in 15 years that something has been stolen stolen from our exhibit. I filed a police report, and the insurance director told me of three other reports of thefts during the five-day show. I’m one of the lucky ones; another exhibitor just down the aisle is using two of the same blenders in his booth.  Neither one was touched.

It’s a good thing that this is the last day of the show since many visitors were interested in our frozen drink mixes. Yesterday, we even set up an appointment for the director of a large Italian coffee company to come to our stand to try a frozen cappuccino. When he gets here, all I can do is serve him a mocha.

I hope he’s not disappointed.  I know that I am.

SIAL, Salon International de l’Alimentation, is the second largest food show in the world and is held biennually in Paris.  The exposition takes place in seven halls at Parc des Expositions, about a 45-minute Metro ride from Paris.  This year there are 5,500 exhibitors and 145,000 visitors are expected.

It is hard to imagine all of the different types of food and drink that are grown, produced, processed and sold in the world, and the thousands of exhibitors at SIAL will cheerfully tell you what they make and why you should try it and buy it. The products range from raw materials such as fruits, vegetables, grains and sugar to their finished counterparts such as potato chips, cookies, desserts and drinks.

Some companies exhibit by themselves in the halls while others are a part of an international pavilion. We are part of the United States pavilion, which has about 125 exhibiting companies.  Mont Blanc is surrounded by American companies showcasing such diverse products as chocolate, olives, pistachios, mints, iced tea, vitamin water, and cheese. I feel sorry for the cheese guy, because I remember  a quote by famous French general and statesman Charles De Gaulle: “How can anyone govern a nation which has 246 different kinds of cheese?”  I have to think it’s something of an uphill battle promoting cheese to the French!

I have always enjoyed visiting the international food shows because I believe it illustrates the remarkable interconnectedness in the world. Walking the aisles of this show is an experience in globalization. Yesterday I walked around the hall and saw some of the international Pavilions surrounding USA. They are randomly chosen and include Mexico, Thailand, Italy, Morocco, Syria, Greece and Iran.

All of these countries have dozens of companies featuring similar products.  Walking by Greece you see booth after booth of feta cheese and olives; Italy is chock full of red wine, prosciutto and coffee; Korea has kimchee and seafood.  One of the interesting aspects of the show is watching people sitting in booths negotiating with vendors from other countries to purchase products. Food transcends national boundaries and helps break down political, religious and social barriers.

In the American pavilion, we have people from all over the world asking about our products.

Mont Blanc Gourmet’s goal for this show is to increase the international distribution of our products.  Interesting conversations yesterday included distributors from Greece, the Middle East, Turkey and Germany. When we get back, the follow up begins. But it looks like we will return home well on the way to having met our goal.

If nothing else, Paris is synonymous with cafés. Sitting at a table outside, sipping un expres (espresso) or cappuccino while watching the world pass by, is the quintessential Parisian experience. Pity that the coffee is so lousy. I tried two different cafés and ordered a cappuccino each time. In the first, the espresso was over-extracted and weak, but the milk was steamed fine.  In the second, the entire drink was much better, with better espresso flavor and a milk foam that was light and frothy. The price of a cappuccino sitting down is about 3.75 euros, or about $5.  French cafes have two prices for their drinks. The less expensive is for drinks ordered and consumed while standing at the bar. The second price is for drinks consumed while sitting at a table and the cost includes “rent” for the table for as long as one wants to sit.

By American standards the drinks are small. My cappuccino was about 10 ounces, served in a china cup.  With the exception of the dozen or so Starbucks in Paris, American style coffee drinks have not caught on here.  The very idea of a take-out drink seems to be anathema to the French; the size of drinks that Americans regularly consume is astonishing to locals. I tried explaining the different drink sizes to the man who installed the espresso machine that I am using at the Salon International de l’Alimentation (SIAL) trade show and his eyes got big as I translated 12-, 16-, and 24-ounce size drinks into metric. Where a standard unit of measure is a liter (about a quart), the idea of drinking three-fourths of a liter as a 24-ounce drink (700 ml here) caused his eyes to get big and his jaw to drop.  I could see he was thinking, “Crazy Americans!”

Tonight I am going to a café after dinner. I hope that my drink is better than the last few that I have had.  It’s Paris after all, home to thousands of cafés. I should be able to get a good drink in one of them.