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Funny, I make cheesecake pops when I have a chunk of cheesecake that's too big to toss but too small to serve on its own. First I shove a plastic spoon into a big chunk of cheesecake, then dunk it in melted chocolate, then put it in the freezer. I served a tray of these things and all I heard were moans of pleasure. (My cheesecake is made from scratch. I've seen Shamdra Lee do this where she murders a frozen cheesecake with a scoop, winding up with a cheesecake carcass.)

Re: Soup Sips - do you mean in small cups? That does seem rather silly. I like to serve "dessert bites" on Chinese porcelain spoons. Even if you have 2 it's not like wolfing down an entire dessert - but you get to have a tasty sweet in small measure.

candidly, i quite agree with most of the list. i appreciate the "response" you offer here (but generally don't agree with you). many foodies i know have been grumbling about the "trends" identified in the Chicago Tribune piece for some time.... there is a lot of pretension and indulgence in the food world and i think it is a good thing for a provocative commentator to offer a "reality check" from time to time....

and you reference the Tribune piece as the "bashing of supposed elites"... "supposed"???? excuse me? who else but "elites" can afford $40 "bistro" entrees and most of the restaurants that feature "foam" and "molecular gastronomy"?

I completely agree with number 9 and 4 - Molecular Gastronomy and Foam! I went to wd-50 for a friend's birthday celebration about a year ago and it was a truly horrifying experience. I ordered the foie gras "gravel" (essentially foie gras that was freeze dried and then shattered with a hammer) and a fish dish and shared a dessert with the table. All of the dishes were too tiny for a proper meal and all covered in or accompanied with foam, I went home with a horrible stomach ache. My boyfriend and I both rolled on the bed feeling the pain of eating dishes of science experiments. I wanted to like wd-50 but I am sorry to say I can't and I won't.

i thought i couldn't like mike isabella any less, and then he claimed to have never seen seinfeld. unacceptable.

What I thought was ludicrous was the fact that the quickfire was judged based on the fact that Kevin happened to have the Sopranos (Italian food) and the fact that Paul Bartolotta himself cooks and enjoys Italian food. Just because that's his preference should not have swayed the way he judged this competition; that is not being a fair and impartial judge!

How can you not be a Sandra fan after that. That's more entertaining than any "competition" on foodtv.

Regarding community tables... they have their place. I don't want to go to a sit down restaraunt and eat at a communal table. Hell, I don't want to go to most places and sit at a communal table, and certainly not one that seats 20 people on each side. A deli is a reasonable spot for a communal table, maybe 6-8 poeple deep. Anything more is absurd.

I find molecular gastronomy to be kinda gimicky. It's good and fun here and there, but not something I'd actively pursue more than once or twice a year.

foams are just horrible. Give me a sauce over bubbles any day.

In another threat I said deconstructed everything was my pet peeve.

I'm not sure if bloomin' onion is really a trend though

I find it ironic that the paper that (rightfully) swoons over all things Rick Bayless would complain about celebrity chefs. I love the Trib, though I admit to having worked for a number of years at the Sun Times. But I think this particular gripe is more indicative of the Second City mentality: "We hate celebrity chefs...EXCEPT FOR OUR OWN, of course."

Meat guy,

I would never complain about packaged food products using the same ingredients as MG chefs.

Transglutaminase, Sodium citrate, Calcium Chloride, Xanthan, Gelatin, Sodium alginate, and Lecithin all have their place.

And sure, the industry figured out the uses of a lot of those things (but not all) before hand. What exactly is the problem with that? Just because a technique was invented by science doesn't mean it's evil. Brining poultry and pork became popular because of the enhanced meat that the big companies were selling. Does that mean I should just buy the enhanced Butterball instead of brining my own bird? Just because xanthan is used to make a stable emulsion in that horrible bottle of Italian dressing I can't use it to make my home made dressing stable?

Sous Vide was invented for institutional cooking in France, but that doesn't mean that it can't make the tastiest steaks and duck confit I've ever had.

I'm sure cooking potatoes in a water bath to set their starch was invented by the instant mashed potato producers, but that doesn't make my potatoes inferior when I attempt it.

If we set our limits as not doing anything that any industrial producer has done before, our options are going to get pretty limited quickly.

Molecular Gastronomy, Deconstruction and $40 entrees can all be great if you get them in the right place, done by the true masters of the craft.

What's dangerous is any of these things in the hands of undertrained chefs/cooks/restauranteurs looking to cash in on a trend.

Most food bloggers / writers / cooks know the difference between a place like El Bulli or Alinea and inexperienced chefs just throwing foams and dusts on every plate so they can double the prices.

Or the difference between a $50 steak thats really worth it and some mediocre hotel restaurant just turning & burning and raking in the dough.

The problem is that most people don't know the difference, and these places give a bad name to molecular gastronomy, fine dining, and professional cooking in general.

I've eaten at Fat Duck (no, I wasn't paying) and some of it is brilliant and some is nonsense. The chips...I would die for those chips. Dried in a special machine to make them extra-crispy, as we all know chips should be. The turbot was amazing, packed with flavour which the sauces added to rather than masked. I didn't like all the nonsense of the various amuse-bouchee or the silly desserts. Do I want snails in my ice cream? No. No I do not. I don't want snails in my anything, to be honest.

What I find intriguing (scratch that, RIDICULOUS!) about the attitude toward molecular gastronomy is that when I design a packaged food product using the same ingredients these chefs use, it triggers the rants about additives in food. Don't use them in a $2 can of soup, but as an item in a $200 + tasting menu its good eats. It makes no sense to me.

Molecular Gastronomy is Better living through chemistry, to steal an old tag line. The things you see in those restaurants used to be the parlor tricks ingredient companies used to trigger developers of Industrial food products to try their products, only with more trendy ingredients. When I went to Alinea, I could remember which company showed me similar items way back in the 70's. Don't tell me these guys are so creative, good marketers maybe, but they are standing on the shoulders of giants (Dow, Monsanto, FMC corporation etc (good thing they are international so they fit into the buy locally trend)) to succeed in their niche. Sous vide was a food industry practice before chefs made individual entrees using the technology, industrial processors made the equipment reliable and affordable for chefs to use.