10 Annoying Food Trends

This article outlines a certain food critic's take on some recent food trends that he is not a fan of, to say the least.  Like I did for the homemade-versus-packaged-food list, I had a few thoughts about this one and figured, what the heck, maybe I'll blab about them here.  You guys can share your thoughts, too.

1. Restaurants refusing any and all substitutions - Once some peeps and I were in the U.P. at a bar, having beer and snacks.  I wanted something more substantial but their menu was not vegetarian-friendly.  I saw a ham and cheese sandwich on the menu so I told the server I'd like just the cheese on it.  She literally told me no, and said that that's how it came and there was no freaking way they would bring it to me without the ham.  What the heck?  I totally agree with the chef on this one, both that it's annoying for customers to go all circus on a menu and that it's annoying for a restaurant to be excessively stingy about reasonable requests.

2.  Sous Vide - apart from the annoying infomercials that I've seen for one particular brand of Sous Vide machine, I have no reason to be annoyed by anything Sous Vide, because I'm not a meat eater.  I can't say if it's good or bad since I don't eat meat, so I'll stay neutral on this one.

3.  Untranslated Menus -  A restaurant needs to do what it has to to serve it's customers, and that includes communicating with them.  If they decide to ostracize a huge portion of the population by not including whatever language that population speaks, then that is their potential loss.  It's not wrong, it's just a strange business decision, in my book.

4.$5 Tap Water: I don't know if this is what this particular writer is referring to, but there was a big news story recently about an Australian restaurant chef who is getting hate mail because he is serving what people perceived to be "$5 tap water".  It was actually that he removed all bottled water from his restaurant and replaced it with a fancy filtration system, so when you order the $5 water you get a specially filtered glass of water with unlimited refills.  You could also order the unfiltered tap water for free.  He wanted to replace the bottles with his own filter system to be more green.  Why are people going nuts over this?  I don't see him doing anything wrong.  Besides, a huge portion of the bottled water you drink is just tap water that goes directly into the bottle, but as long as it's in a bottle we think we should pay more for it.  This guy is filtering it; that's at least a service to pay for.  He got threats of bodily harm.  Let's all just get a grip, people.

5.  Bartender Overreach: Agreed.  Annoying.

6.  Chef Overreach:  Agreed.  Annoying.

7.  Serving Depleted Seafood:  Very much agreed. 

8.  Truffle Oil:  Truffles, perhaps the most expensive food on earth, don't make oil.  "Truffle Oil" is any sort of oil, sometimes olive or some other vegetable oil, which is infused with truffles to take on their flavor.  Except these days it's usually not actual real truffles, it's synthetic truffle flavor made out of other things.  I have learned in the last few months that when a chef has an opinion about truffle oil, s/he REALLY has an opinion about truffle oil.  I saw a tv chef chew someone out for several minutes for using it.  It is apparently evil incarnate and anyone who would dare touch it is the dumbest person to ever live.  I wouldn't know, I have never used it, nor have I ever been priviledged to eat a real truffle.  I have heard that there is the "real thing" out there, made with real truffles, so it's feasable to me that some truffle oil somewhere tastes good.  But, again, I just don't know.  Maybe one day when I have two thousand dollars lying around I'll buy some real truffles and a few types of truffle oil and give it a taste test.  But then again, I'd rather buy two thousand dollars' worth of cheese.

9.  Fancy-schmancy coffee:  Sortof agreed.  Like many indulgences, there is a time and a place for the fanciest version of something, but 99% of the time most of us will not be any happier with a $10 cup of coffee than we will with the $2 one.  Mind you, he's not talking about lattes and Starbucks - but about the trend in very fancy roasting and brewing techniques in extreme specialty shops.  The type of thing you find at Blue Bottle, for instance.  Not that there's anything wrong with Blue Bottle - it's just that the truth is, you can get good quality coffee quite easily for pretty cheap these days.  Which is why, I suppose, these places are suddenly popping up... when everybody can make their own quality coffee, you have to do something unique if you want a customer.  Hmmm.  I just realized that.

10.  Molecular Gastronomy:  Ahh, Molecular Gastronomy!  I was WAITING for this one.  I didn't know that "chefs prefer Modernist Cuisine."  I always just say Molecular Gastronomy.  I've actually talked about it with Dan a lot, because it's been popping up here and there, and everybody seems to have their own opinion about it -  including me. I don't want to get into the whole thing so I'll try to hit a few basic points. 

The other day I heard somebody talking about MG say, "that new science stuff belongs in the lab, not the kitchen" I thought, if baking soda or gelatine were invented today they would be considered Molecular Gastronomy.  I think the problem with MG is that some chefs take it too far and make the process the focus, rather than the food, like, "look at the cool thing we are able to do."  Just like every other cooking technique, which at one time or another must have seemed very science-ey, the point is to have delicious, appealing food, and everything you use to get there is just a tool.  If you make the tools or the process the main event, then it's no wonder the food is not so great at the end.  My prediction is that certain MG techniques will get incorporated into most cook's repertoires and become more commonplace and nobody will think it's a big deal anymore, while other techniques will still be weird, because they are weird.  So I guess my answer is, that I really don't mind MG, but I do mind the chefs who make it the entire focus.

Feel free to blab all your own thoughts about any of the above in the comments. 

Happy eating!