Trends That Should End
The rise of mac and cheese: a good trend. From Google Trends.
Oh, yes. It’s that time of year, when serious eaters everywhere assess the foodscape to determine what we’re going to see more of on our plates next year and how we feel about it. While there are a few things all of us at Serious Eats are excited about, like salted caramel ice cream, gnudi, and heritage pork, there are a few things we are scared of. Very scared.
First the good— trends we would like to see blow up into a continuing presence in our mouths.
MORE, PLEASE
Heritage pork: Luscious, succulent, porky deliciousness (in the right hands).
Gnudi: These little cloudlike ricotta dumplings are just so delicious served with butter. And sage.
Gastro pubs: Places like the Spotted Pig in New York, the Standard Tap Room in Philadelphia, Avec in Chicago, and the Palace Kitchen in Seattle make us happy with their publike atmosphere and serious, unpretentious food.
Salted caramel ice cream (with or without peanuts): It’s salty, it’s sweet, it literally melts in your mouth. And when there are salted peanuts added, you have a triumphant crunch. What more could we ask for in a dessert?
Mac and Cheese: It's everywhere—from barbecue joints, to soul food eateries, to four star restaurants. New York has two mac and cheese–only restaurants. How could that be bad?
Now the bad (and sometimes even ugly).
TRENDS THAT SHOULD END
Savory ice creams and other sweets: If we never see another dish of basil ice cream, that would be fine with us. Whatever happened to a perfect scoop of vanilla, chocolate, or coffee ice cream, with some hot fudge or chocolate sauce? That’s our idea of heaven.
Celebrity chef–driven steakhouses: Pots and pans, yes. Cookbooks, sure. But why can’t rock star chefs leave steak to the Peter Lugers, Bern’s, Murray’s, Pacific Dining Car, and the other local steakhouses around the country.
Celebrity chef–driven burger joints In-N-Out, yes. Shake Shack in New York City, sure we love it. Hudson’s in Idaho, Red Mill in Seattle, Dyer’s in Memphis, the Apple Pan in Los Angeles—they all serve our burger Platonic ideal. The BLT Burgers of the world should be banned.
Restaurant concepts: Whatever happened to good old restaurants with an original idea and an obsessed individual behind that idea? Does every restaurant have to be cloned to be deemed successful? We don’t think so. We need more restaurants and fewer concepts.
Televisions in the bar of upscale restaurants: We love television. We watch it a lot. But when we go out to a nice restaurant, we’d like to enjoy the place itself along with the people we’re eating with, and not the Simpsons. We do admit that the Simpsons episode in which Homer becomes a restaurant critic is a perfect 22 minutes of television. (NB: Our friends at Eater had a nice piece about this trend earlier in the year.
Really bad Euro techno music in restaurants: We love music, but must we listen to it as we dig into a great plate of pasta or some of those terrific gnudi we talked about above? And somebody needs to tell restaurateurs around the country that bad European techno music should never be heard in a restaurant, or anywhere else for that matter.
Bad pork bellies are just blubber: A properly cooked pork belly with just about all of the fat rendered with a crispy crust is one of life’s great pleasures. A sloppily cooked slice of pork belly is just a piece of blubber with a little edge.
'Molecular gastronomy' in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing: The Grant Achatz and the Wylie Dufresnes of the world should be applauded. They’re stretching the art of great cooking. But the second-rate chefs who eat one meal at El Bulli and think they’re Ferran Adrià don’t realize that bad foam belongs in cheap mattresses.
OK. That's our wheat-from-chaff list. Now we want to hear from you, Serious Eaters. What food trends make you cranky, and which ones make you salivate?
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14 Comments:
When Ed Levine and the Times' Meehan dismiss BLT Burger with their reflexive anti-elitist posturing, it makes me wonder whether they were more interested in cultivating a certain following , rather than writing an open-minded , fair review.
rangoon at 11:08AM on 12/21/06
CookieCrumb at I'm Mad and I Eat and I (Seriously Good) are having a mac-n-cheese-off on Friday Jan. 5th. Anyone who wants to join the melee is invited.
Kevin at 12:11PM on 12/21/06
@Kevin: Great idea! Can't wait to see the results. I might have to dig my mac and cheese cookbook off the shelf and jump in. Either that or use the tried-and-true MnC recipe I got from Martha.
Adam Kuban at 12:29PM on 12/21/06
See also:
http://www.baumwhiteman.com/FOOD%20TRENDS%202007%20bg.pdf
http://blog.foodienyc.com/2006/11/2006_best_and_w.html (NYC-centric)
kathryn at 1:30PM on 12/21/06
Frisee salad? While nothing makes me happier than the runny poached egg that usually accompanies this starter, the frisee salad itself drives me nuts. It slaps you in the face when you try to eat it, spreading oily salad dressing all over your chin (an area, one might point out, that's already prone to pimples).
cindyprice at 1:56PM on 12/21/06
Bad pork bellies, bad 'molecular gastronomy" and bad hamburgers are all part of the larger food group--bad food--and as such, really don't reflect on the superior examples of their type. Is it really worth singling them out for scorn? Even good pork bellies may take some acquiring of taste to appreciate and a little goes a long way, although admittedly, bad pot roast is probably still edible. Perhaps I should be grateful my grandmother never made pork belly. Adrià, by the way, says 'molecular gastronomy' doesn't apply to his cooking and that he was not influenced by the movement or workshop that is credited with the origin of that term.
Savory ice cream, however, is worthy of more discussion. Are you objecting to savory flavors in dessert, or the use of ice cream in savory courses? Maybe ten years ago or more, I had pear ice cream flavored with tarragon in a three star restaurant in San Sebastian and poached fennel with vanilla ice cream in an unstarred Paris bistro. Since then, the incorporation of savory ingredients in ice cream has seemed uncontroversial and the results delicious when handled by a good pastry chef. An incompetent pastry chef can muck up chocolate. As for savory ice creams in savory dishes, the only problem I've seen is perhaps the need for sugar to keep it from crystallizing. For all the examples one might offer in terms of fruit with meat and sugar in Asian savory dishes, I find sweetness a taste most chefs don't handle well when being creative.
Bux at 3:20PM on 12/21/06
cindyprice, As someone more likely to have a face full of whiskers than pimples, maybe I'm not the one to comment on frisee salad, but I think a good frisee salad with lardons and soft poached egg is well worth learning how to eat. I mean some people have trouble handling meat, fish and poultry if still on the bone when on their plate, but I'd hate to see restaurants cater to those who have issues with some dishes simply because those dishes require a bit of finesse on the diners part. On second thought, I think it would be a greater shame if restaurants removed all food that was messy to eat, no matter how good the diner's technique.
Bux at 3:33PM on 12/21/06
bux, are you gently suggesting i'm fumble-fingered at the dinner table? ah, me - perhaps there is some truth in this. might i humbly request a lesson on frisee-salad-eating technique? for starters, do you cut the leaves into bite-sized portions before you begin?
cindyprice at 3:55PM on 12/21/06
hold the line, folks. hold the line. http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2006/01/22/open-letter-to-chefs-ordering-salad-greens-for-their-supposedly-upscale-restaurants/
cindyprice at 4:02PM on 12/21/06
cindy, I guess I was suggesting that part of the responsibility for enjoying a fine dinner is borne by the diner and that includes learning how to eat certain dishes. I clearly recall the first time I ate out with fellow college students at a "nice" restaurant. What I noticed more than anything else was that they were more adept than I was using a knife and fork. I resolved to to appear more sophisticated by the time graduated--or at least to be a more confident boor in public.
My second thought, as expressed in my post, was that some foods are just naturally messier than others, but still worth it. Isn't that why god gave us napkins, or rolls of paper towels where appropriate.
To a greater degree, I might have been reacting to the idea that anyone should call for the disappearance of any food based on his own subjective taste. It didn't even make sense for Ed to call for an end to savory flavors in ice cream--I assume that would include black peper in vanilla ice cream--when he had just called for more salted caramel ice cream. Even the basic license for inconsistency assumed by food critics should call for a day's pause.
As for instruction on eating frisee, I have to think about that. It's been a while since I've ordered it and we rarely have it at home. My wife doesn't like it much. ;-) Therein lies the best suggestion. If you don't like it, just don't order it or buy it. I suspect that in some restaurants it's more daintily prepared, reducing the problem. Although I can't recall for sure, I suspect I am more likely to try and and use my knife and fork to fold the frisee into a manageable bundle, than I am to cut it, but that too is certainly an option if the kitchen is sending it out in hunks resembling small heads. And yes, sometimes I get dressing on my beard and even egg on my face. The key in that case is to make the others at the table believe they just didn't enjoy the meal as much as you did.
Bux at 6:43PM on 12/21/06
^*perk*^ A mac and cheese off? I'm so there! This may be just the thing to get my languishing blog back into at least a semi-active state. I even have a new Chanukah camera to use for photos. :-D Yay!
Calichef at 6:54PM on 12/21/06
I don't have a problem with BLT Burger other than that the service is terrible--non-existent, apathetic, incompetent--and that the fries are totally pre-fab. I am not offended by celebrity chefs doing burgers, but BLT Burger deserves to die simply because it is stocked with employees who seem not to care a whit about serving their customers.
danlevy at 4:46PM on 12/23/06
To rangoon: With all due respect, have you eaten at BLT Burger? The burgers are, at best, acceptable, and at worst, awful. And at high prices... I think LT is a genius for opening it, but he really shouldn't have.
DagNabbit at 4:00PM on 12/26/06
Even if it were technically possible, I don't think I'd want pork belly with "just about all of the fat rendered." Thin, but distinct layers of custard-like fat, and the exquisite counterpoint they play with the meat and the crispy skin, are an integral part of the peak pork belly experience...embrace them...
daddyo at 9:06PM on 12/26/06