Thankfully, many of the food trends I feared at the beginning of 2012 have not come to pass.
However, even in eight months, there have been some very noticeable developments in both the food we are served in restaurants and the way we cook at home.
Some of them are welcome and some less far less so, but it won’t be long before everyone is jumping aboard the latest food fads of 2012.
Doing Things To Bacon That Should Never Be Done To Bacon
It would appear that the fact that bacon is proof that God exists and that he is a good god is not enough for some people. Now it is being candied, put into cocktails, covered in chocolate and used to top ice cream.
While some of these ideas might have merit, most are an abomination against an ingredient that is perfectly fine just as it is, thank you very much. I suspect that the next time I go into a restaurant and someone just serves me fried bacon, I may hug them so hard they’ll pass out.
No-Substitution Menus
During a recent visit to an L.A. hot spot for lunch, the server pointed forcefully at the menu’s small print, which read, “All requests for substitutions or modifications will be politely declined.”
I live in L.A., so trust me when I say that I know just how high maintenance some diners can be. Being asked to totally rework a dish to fit in with someone’s latest diet fad is both impractical and irritating.
That said, the recent trend of restaurants denying diners the right to modify their dishes in any way indicates that too many chefs and owners are now viewing customers as a nuisance and have forgotten the very notion of hospitality itself. Hopefully 2013 will bring back some balance to the diner-restaurateur power struggle.
Sustainable Supply
Now that the words “seasonal” and “local” have been used so much they have lost almost all meaning, it’s time for “sustainability” to take a bow. Restaurants are clamoring to tell the world how little carbon they emit into the atmosphere. They recycle as a matter of course, create urban rooftop gardens from which to harvest produce and even have guidelines to make sure there is a consistent standard.
All of this is laudable enough and should be encouraged as long as they don’t forget that, above all that, they need to be serving good food in a hospitable atmosphere.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider