I spent the past few days (Friday - Sunday) at a tradeshow in Anaheim. I never knew how hard it would be to find decent food in that area. Overall, my dining experience was less than stellar. It was the Natural Products Expo so there were quite a few vendors shelling out samples of their items, but for an actual meal in the area...good luck. Friday morning I was home where I was able to have my usual breakfast. I took a snack for lunch. Dinner was at a nearby Marriott restaurant and it was a little better than I though, but not enough to justify the price. I had mix greens salad with vinaigrette and a crabcake (I know it has gluten) and it was edible. My DP had the seared Ahi tuna and it was pretty good - just how tuna should be prepared. The next day, started the culinary decline. Breakfast was a very modest, organic raw walnut butter, a strip of nori and a little coconut oil for we didn’t really have a place to go to eat. The hotel restaurant had the usual "continental" breakfast: starch, carbs, sugar, and more starch. Lunch was at the same place we at the previous night, except the food was surprisingly horrible (and overpriced to boot). I opted for the salad bar. All of the prepared salads had cheese, something I just don’t like at all. The only salad that was available was ice berg lettuce and a few ashy shredded carrots. The other food at the bar consisted of baked Buffalo wings, fried chicken (tasted like it was previously frozen for 20 years), potato skins with cheese (looked disgusting), soggy squash, and a few other things was forgettable. DP ordered the halibut and it was dried, tasteless and slathered in a thick, bland sauce. Needless to say, I ate pretty light for lunch.
The show was packed and busy and I was able to satisfy my hunger with the samples on the show floor. Dinner was a bit later because we met a friend for a glass of wine after the show and engaged in some post-show activities. While scrambling for a place to eat, we came across a Thai food restaurant outside of the area. It was a small, hole-in-the-wall type place in an older, decaying strip mall. Normally where I come from, hole-in-the-wall places are the best. It was small, but not cute though. There were no other places to go in the area. The menu looked pretty diverse and so we ordered several plates. The idea was to have enough for the next day since we had a refrigerator in our room. ¾ of the way through the meal, my head started to pound. The gentleman that joined us asked the server if there was MSG in the food and she said yes.
Now given my allergy to MSG, I should have remembered to ask, but its been years since I’ve actually been to a place that had that in their food. MSG just isn’t that popular in the Bay Area (especially Berkeley) given that amount of health conscious people we have in the area. I immediately stopped eating (thankfully, I didn’t have much) and drink a glass of water. On our way back to the hotel, it felt as if my head was under a vice. The pain gradually got tighter and tighter. I don’t have headaches let alone migraines normally so this was a new experience for me.
When we got back to the hotel, I took a few supplements and it seemed to have calmed it down. We ordered a movie and went to bed to prepare for our journey home the next day.
Afraid to eat anything ever again but hungry, we asked the front desk if there are any places they would recommend for food. They handed us a generic hand drawn map of downtown Fullerton and gave us directions. The navigation system in our car got us there. In ninety something degree heat, hungry and recovering from the previous night’s MSG poisoning, we walked around the quiet, but quaint downtown area where the streets are lined with independent shops and restaurants; a stark contrast to the rest of the area with its 1970s strip malls, fast food and chain stores. We found a vegan restaurant to cool off and have lunch. I had the grilled tempeh (fermented tofu), brown rice with tamari, grilled eggplant, peppers and portabella mushrooms. I also ordered a salad. My body was starving for nourishment. DP ordered something similar. It was very good meal, perfect for the 7 hour drive that was ahead of us.
Next time I am in the area, I will be more prepared. I just had no idea that food choices were so limited in the area, given the amount of visitors it attracts every year.
