A Visit to the Fancy Food Show
Monday, January 21, 2013 at 4:00AM 
By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork
The Winter Fancy Food Show at San Francisco’s Moscone Center is like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: depending on which part you explore, your impressions could be wildly different.
With 80,000 specialty foods and beverages from more than 35 countries and regions, it’s impossible to traverse the entire show to see, taste and evaluate everything. I don’t even try.
Instead, I walked the show on the opening day yesterday, keeping an eye out for things that caught my fancy. Like a kid in a candy shop, some restraint is required if you want to avoid making yourself sick by overindulging. I taste sparingly only the foods I’m really interested in for my post. (I make exceptions for good cheeses and prosciutto de Parma.)