It's Sunday and it's the Summer Fancy Food Show in the ninety degrees heat of the Big Apple! (Well, it makes a change from London in the rain.) This is the food fair where sinister looking guys in black suits with shades do impressions of the Blues Brothers while asking the Brits to pack Stilton flavoured with beetroot. It's also where buyers in pink shorts and flowered tee-shirts trawl the stands. But then, this is the whacky City that never sleeps, so it's no surprise that visiting British grocery folk were determined New York lives up to its name. Food from Britain carried the banner for the old country, determined to convince the doubting Yanks that our nosh is better than theirs. Mind you, FFB's genial chairman Gordon Summerfield will not forget the trip in a hurry. He was heard telling a young Australian that our cricketing lads would "grind the Aussies into dust". Alas, what Gordon didn't know was that we had just lost the first Test at Edgbaston and the Lions had also been hammered in the second test Down Under. Exit Gordon, stage left, muttering something about "well, there's always next season". Mind you, that didn't raise as much laughter as the incident on the Anglesey Sea Salt stand where they had to assure a puzzled New Yorker that their salt was not made from whales, as in the mammals, but was from Wales the country. A great trip for all from this side of the Atlantic. The only black spot? A visit from Dubya, president of the Land of the Free, brought traffic chaos to parts of Manhattan. Still, it's his country. I suppose he can do as he likes. {{COUNTERPOINT }}

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