Days One and Two of the FABA fair (and a great meal)

Friday night was very interesting. There was a really big line/group waiting to get in at 530pm and the hall was filled and busy until it closed at 9:30. People were active and engaged....asking great questions, etc. I must admit, I was a bit surprised. Tampa/St. Petersburg can field a genuinely large and sophisticated biblio-crowd. On the other hand, I did not have a single sale all evening....until the last fifteen minutes where one sale made the fair/weekend/week/month. This is, of course, often the case...but it is always nice when things fall into place. So overall, it was just a great day. An easy setup, quick dinner, great evening event and a late-night dip in the hot-tub to sooth my aching feet. Fun had by all.

Saturday started early. We had breakfast on the way. I had something wildly unhealthy that is only *really* good below the Mason/Dixon Line...made correctly, you can actually feel the major arteries in your chest as you eat it. The fair started at 10am and closed up at 5pm. Again, it was genuinely busy all day long. While actual sales were reasonably soft, I had a large number of really "engaged" conversations and am confident that several are going to either result in new material coming in and/or new clients on the development side. There were also a large number of people who were very clearly "shopping" today with the intent of coming back tomorrow to buy. We shall see.

We were on the waiting list for this show for at least two years (and, actually, I think think three). I very nearly passed when they called because I have been just straight out this spring but Suzanne convinced me that we should really take a try at it. I could not be more pleased. Much to my surprise and pleasure, this is a great town for a book fair (and having an excuse to come south in early March is not too bad, either). Oh, and the buying at this fair has been very good, as well...more on this, perhaps, as the dust settles.

Finally, dinner was just great. Our hotel is less than a block from BayWalk, an open-air shopping/dinning complex. There we found Banbu. Banbu is bascally a Mongolian grill. If you are not familiar with the concept, you get a wee bowl and make your dinner (more than once, if you are so inclined). The first stage is the "seafood/meat" station with fresh squid, shrimp, chicken, pork, lamb, several iterations of dead cow and the like. Then there is the huge veggie section with everything from fresh mango to edanami to baby corn and freshly minced garlic. Finally, you go and choose your "sauce" and again, there is a tremendous range from the expected (sweet and sour, teriyaki, and peanut sauce) to the funky and fresh (outstanding Asian ginger, stunningly fiery "Banbu Red Pepper Ginger" and too many others to even fathom (there were at least 18 different sauces).

Then you bring your wee bowl of meat and veggie and prep bowl of sauce to the "bar" around a huge circular cooking surface (think very shallow wok with a hole in the center). The cook takes your bowl and puts it out in a "line" on the surface...along with those others who are ready. You stand there chatting while it cooks, the cooks come by and shuffle things about and, at the end, drizzle your chosen sauce over the top (only at the end as most have some sugar component that will caramelize to burn if on at the start). Then they scrap it off the grill and onto a plate for you. A few shakes of roasted sesame seeds and you are off.

Everything is extremely fresh and nice. The service was great and the food was just fabulous. The trick, is fighting the urge to make a nice big bowl of whatever yummy combo you have in mind and making a lovely *small* bowl. This way, you can make several trips through the system and try all sorts of good things. Suffice it to say that I had several courses and finished with a lovely "desert" of grilled pineapple, mandarin orange and mango with a splash of asian ginger at the finish.

Back to the hotel by 8pm and two hoursish in the pool with Aidan and off to bed and blogging well sated and prune-y. Tomorrow runs from 11am to 4pm and then we pack up, pick up our car and drive to the Jupiter area to see Suzanne's parents.