CHICAGO — The first restaurant exposition I ever attended, we were still writing guest checks by hand.

You took the order on a paper ticket, you carried it back, and you clipped it to a stainless steel wheel in the kitchen window. The cook spun the wheel. That was the system. That was the technology.

I have come to Chicago for the National Restaurant Association show for almost 40 years now. This is somewhere around my 30th visit. For a man who has spent his life feeding people, the restaurant show is what Disney World is to a 10-year-old. Everything that touches a restaurant is under one roof. Food and ranges and walk-in coolers. Decor. Linens. Knives. When I say everything, that’s not hyperbole. I mean everything.

In the early days, it took me three full days to walk the floor. Now I’m faster. I know what I’m looking for, I know how to keep moving when somebody tries to pull me toward a booth I have no use for, and the trouble is I have a use for almost everything.

When I first came here, technology barely had a corner. A few vendors stood off to the side with the first point-of-sale computers, big clunky things that would look like museum pieces today. I remember somebody telling me, with real confidence, that the computer was going to be the future of the restaurant business.

He was right, and then some.

Walk the show now and the technology section is nearly as big as the whole show used to be. And this year it is wrapped in something new again. Artificial intelligence is in every other booth. Ordering. Scheduling. Inventory that counts itself. An agent that answers the phone so the host doesn’t have to. There is now, I am fairly certain, a machine somewhere on that floor that can run a restaurant better than I can, and it will do it for years on end without ever once cutting itself on the slicer, hiding in the walk-in, or quitting by text message at 4:55 on a Friday. Forty years ago we clipped a paper ticket to a wheel. Now the wheel thinks.

I stood in front of one of those AI booths for a long time this trip, and I will be honest about how it lands on me. Part of me worries. A restaurant is people taking care of people, and I have spent my whole life believing the warmth in a dining room can’t come out of a machine. But a bigger part of me is intrigued. I have always loved this business most when it was changing, and it is changing fast, and I plan to be standing right in the middle of it when it does.

This year I had company.

My son Harrison walked the show with me. It’s his fourth time.

Harrison is in the middle of an eight-year apprenticeship in this business. Four years of college. Two years of culinary school. Then at least two years working for someone other than his old man, which is the most important leg of the journey. He is spending it in Chicago with Boka Restaurant Group. Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz started Boka in 2002 and have built more than 40 restaurants since. There is not a finer group for a young chef to learn from, and I sleep better in Mississippi knowing it.

Thirty years ago I came to this show with one restaurant and a head full of dreams I had no proof I could pull off. Chicago is where I came to steal them. The restaurants in this city handed me more ideas and inspiration than I could carry home, year after year.

This afternoon I fly back to Hattiesburg, to the area seven generations of my family have called home. Harrison’s road back will come on a later day, after the apprenticeship is done. But it will come. He knows where home is.

We walked the show together this year. He is asking his own questions at the booths now. I am the old guy asking too many. Forty years apart in what we have seen, and side by side on the same floor.

I have watched that show change for 30-plus years, and it is not done changing. I will keep watching if they let me through the door. But the one thing it cannot do is point a son toward home. Harrison doesn’t need it to. He knows the way.

Grateful. Still hungry.

Onward.

PORK RIBS WITH POLENTA

In the American South we eat shrimp and grits. In Tuscany they eat ribs and polenta. These ribs are baked in a hearty tomato stock and are perfectly matched with polenta.

Ingredients:
1 rack baby back pork ribs, sliced into individual pieces
1/4 cup house seasoning blend
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups yellow onion, small diced
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 cups dry red wine
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand, with juice
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 recipe polenta

Directions:
■ Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
■ Season the ribs with the house seasoning blend. Heat the oil in a large roasting pan over high heat. Once hot, sear the rib pieces on each side until browned. Do not overcrowd the pan. Work in small batches if necessary.
■ Once browned, set the ribs aside and lower the heat to medium-low. Add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about four to six minutes. Add the tomato paste and stir constantly for five minutes so as not to scorch.
■ Deglaze the pan with the wine and reduce by half. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and continue cooking for five more minutes. Cover and place in the oven for one hour.
Serve over polenta.

POLENTA

You can buy polenta, a ground-up version of corn, in the grains section at your grocery store. Bob’s Red Mill sells a great bag.

Ingredients:
2 cups polenta
6 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
■ In a 2-quart saucepot, bring the chicken stock to a boil.
■ Add the polenta or cornmeal and reduce to medium-low heat and stir constantly until it begins to thicken, about three to four minutes.
■ Season with salt and pepper, and drizzle with a small amount of extra-virgin olive oil. Serve immediately.

Robert St. John is a restaurateur, author, enthusiastic traveler, and world-class eater from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He has spent four decades in the restaurant industry, written 13 books, and written a syndicated newspaper column for more than 24 years. Read more about Robert at robertstjohn.com.

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