We’ve never been to the Sweets and Snacks Expo part of the National Restaurant Association show, but we hear from people like Louisa Chu that it combines the psychedelia of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the good, Gene Wilder one) with the desperate flesh-ripping hunger of Dawn of the Dead on the last day, when people get into a free-for-all for samples the exhibitors don’t really want to lug home. (Chu has an elaborate strategy for sample-grabbing you should definitely check into before you go next year.) Anyway, like Wonka they don’t allow cameras in the expo itself, but Anthony Todd of Chicagoist came back with plenty of samples and filed a report on them, so you can know which candy produced hacking coughs, which one leaves you looking like you just ate a Smurf, and which one is allegedly used by Angelina Jolie. [Chicagoist]
