Until last Friday, the last food trade show I attended was the "Fancy Food Show" in New York, where the exhibitors practically throw food at you, shove wine glasses in your face, and then send you away with more of the same to take home. Of course, it wasn't fair of me to have images of the mammoth spectacle that is the Fancy Food Show is in my mind when I went to check out Foodapest - which is Hungary's biggest food industry trade fair - on its last day. Still, with so much food something has to be good and fine, and some was.

While I hoped to discover some tasty new Hungarian specialty products, it was a bit disappointing that most of Hungary's Foodapest offerings can be found in your average corner store. My hopes of befriending Hungarian artisanal cheese makers, bakers, and sausage-makers were pretty much dashed once I saw the actual SPAR display and the piles of frozen food on show. Here in Hungary, many of the exhibitors just don't seem to get it. Only a few offered samples, and many of these freebies could only be had after hassling disinterested assistants, who forked them over without a smile. I sped through Foodatech (a hall filled with shiny steel food processing equipment and things like automatic hand washers and massive refrigeration equipment) and Foodapack (another hall filled with packaging samples and things like bottling machines and label makers) and headed straight to the hall that held the more appetizing "Gourmet Land," "Meat Land," and "Drink Land." After doing my best to avoid the virsli and processed food displays (which meant a big chunk of the place), here are a few of the most memorable things that I found in the waning hours of the event.

With little doubt, the star of "Meat Land" was a smoked mangalica ham (below, in top pic), made from the famous variety of "premium" pig and set up on a cutting stand like the famous Spanish jamón Serrano, to be thinly sliced. It is produced by the family-owned and Tatabánya-based Palatin Élelmiszerkereskedelmi Mezőgazdasági és Szolgáltató Kft., a company that offers a range of gorgeous sausages, salamis, and other hams. Also notable was their Mangalica paprikás szalámi and their nature line of csípős (spicy) szalámi and kolbász (sausage). The company has several shops in Hungary, and its products are sold in Budapest at the Rákóczi téri csarnok. The mangalica ham goes for around Ft 4,500 per kilo.

According to Foodapest's organizers, nearly half of the 650 exhibitors were foreign companies looking to get into the Hungarian market. While I tried to concentrate on the Hungarian products, I couldn't pass through the French cheese section without dutifully sampling what was on offer, including a variety of excellent handmade cheeses from a company called Armor Fraís, from Malville. Brillat Savarin, sheep's milk Roquefort, reblochon, bright orange mimolette, and lots of goat cheese were just a few of the tasty sajtok being gobbled up as fast as they could be sliced. The company came to Foodapest to find a Hungarian distributor, and if it does, they will have at least one loyal cutomer. Rather than mentioning all of the other foreign products that you won't yet find in Hungary, I'll let you in on one that you will. A wine called Tcherga - a tasty blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Rubin (a cross between Nebbiolo and Syrah developed in Bulgaria) - is from the Domain Menada Winery in Bulgaria's Thracian Valley. According to the distributor, it's available at G'Roby Buda for under Ft 2,000.

Getting back to the local scene, one of the coolest people I chatted to was János Kovács of the Hungarian Ostrich Breeding Association. He had just a few ostrich eggs, a poster, and a binder full of news clippings and diagrams of cuts of Ostrich (strucc) meat on display. He looked a bit lost stuffed between the big guys like supermarket Kaiser's and meat processor Debreceni Hús, and even seemed a bit surprised to have someone stop at his display. Ostrich meat is a lean red meat low in fat and cholesterol and high in iron. It can't be bought over the counter in Budapest just yet, he said, but if you order ten kilos (it's between Ft 2,500 and Ft 3,000 per kilo), an ostrich farmer will deliver it to you directly from the Ostrich farm in Hajdúnánás, near Debrecen. For more information, call 322-5661.

While I don't have enough freezer space for even a kilo of strucc, if I did, I'd be the first to make the call, if only because of Kovács's passion for his product. Too bad so many of the other domestic exhibitors seemed to lack any such enthusiasm, to the point of seeming like birds with their heads in the sand.