I’ve honestly never encountered this attitude. I know foodies can be annoying, but I feel like this is a good bit of exaggeration. For the record, my “one true grilled cheese” is Kraft singles and squishy American white bread.
yes, it’s exaggeration (as I’d hoped the “Smitheringwick-upon-Bunkenshire” thing would have indicated) but not all that exaggerated. I have, however, had my fill of wannabe snobs who act like they can’t eat anything that isn’t composed of either obscure or positively revolting ingredients. I’ve been around long enough to sort of agree with Douglas Adams in that “delicacy” means “revolting shit that rich snobs choke down in an attempt to impress other rich snobs.” PROTIP: If someone brings up casu marzu, and your first impulse is to say/post “OMG I would SO eat casu marzu” you’re not impressing anyone. you just look like the douchecanoe you are.
Whole wheat pasta is disgusting. Thank you whole wheat pasta haters, I thought I was the only one. More controversial in modern-day food circles is my hatred of brown rice. Only processed white basmati, jasmine or sushi rice will do for me. The only “whole” grain I like is whole wheat flour in chapatis. I don’t feel guilty about my plebe middle-aisle grain tastes because I don’t consume them anymore on a regular basis, so they’re a treat food for me at a restaurant or something.
Maybe this is a little niche to the world of paleo, but I don’t like coconut oil (or coconut butter blecchhh) in food at ALL. And I say this as a S. Indian, where ground dried coconut features in nearly every dish, all our food was cooked in coconut oil and most of our men died around 50 of heart disease. Olive oil or macadamia oil, thanks.
I also don’t like almond butter blahblah. Peanut reigns supreme.
Greek yoghurt is amazing, I love it. Apparently it is incredibly bad for the environment because commercial greek yoghurt product creates highly acidic whey as a by-product so maybe you greek yoghurt haters can just say greek yoghurt is not green enough for you foodie sniff.
Man, I wish that real salad greens were a trend. I’ve been to way too many salad bars that had no leaf vegetable available other than (ugh) iceberg lettuce. I’m not exactly holding out hope of a salad bar getting something as wonderful as dandelion (it’s too seasonal, and there’s too much prejudice against it), but can we at least have some arugula? Or even just multiple varieties of lettuce?
Meh, I’d try it. I’m not expecting it to be transcendent, though. But there’s a lot of stuff I genuinely like that is considered “revolting” by a lot of people, and it’s not to gain some sort of “cred,” it’s just that I love the stuff.
I was thinking of mentioning brown rice. I actually do like it quite a bit, but it’s significantly different from its white rice cousin. I don’t use them interchangeably.
Brown rice is good.
Brown rice sushi on the other hand is just wrong.
Wait, brown rice sushi? How does that even work? Sushi rice needs to stick together.
Brown rice can be quite sticky.
Does everything have to be fucking spicy? Do we need jalapeno and chipotle and buffalo and siracha flavored everything? With banana peppers and pepper jack on top, too.
Now, I appreciate that people like spicy, and I appreciate that hot spices add flavor. But that’s the problem - if I go to a joint that has a good chef and good food, I don’t want to start deconstructing a menu item away from what the chef intended just so I can avoid burning myself from the inside out.
Instead, I’d like chefs to create lovely flavorful dishes that don’t incorporate any sort of hot pepper flavoring. That way I can just order off the menu and get a good taste of their good food.
We have this restaurant in Cleveland called Melt. They specialize in crazy grilled cheese sandwiches. On their regular menu, half of the sandwiches have some sort of spicy element. And if you’re paying $9 for a grilled cheese sandwich, you want to include all of the elements the chef intended, so the spicy ones are out for me. Then, every month they have a special sandwich, and sometimes two in a month. Probably 80% of the time the sandwich is centered around a spicy hit flavor, or includes 2 or 3 spicy elements. So rarely do I get to try the specials.
Non-spicy food doesn’t have to be bland. Let people douse their orders in hot sauce, after the fact. Make some good non-spicy food we all can enjoy!
Next time I’m in that neck of the woods, I’m stopping by there. Looks completely up my alley.
Whey can then be made into ricotta cheese. I understand it’s also much-loved by chickens.
It’s not really a trend- more like a sad reality for many years, but fast food burgers in boxes just ain’t right, be they cardboard or Styrofoam. I don’t know the physics, but burgers wrapped in wax paper or foil just taste better.
They’ve always struck me as incredibly wasteful - how many trees are cut down to make boxes whose sole purpose is to hold a fast food burger for the 10 seconds it takes to carry it from the counter to one’s table?
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Food Trunks! Mediocre Food. Restricted Menu. No tables/chairs/bathrooms. I don’t get it.
Some of the ones around here serve pretty darn good food. No better or worse than a restaurant.
It’s pretty easy to “get”. Creative types who don’t have enough money to open their own restaurant, but still want to strike out on their own. What’s not to like?
Totally agree on the awful, bitter salad greens and overwhelming spicy in everything.
But my biggest peeve is chips, nachos, crisps, pretzels, popcorn, and everything else that’s been tarted up with horrid artificial flavors. Can’t just be corn chips, they have to be jalapeno-cheddar corn chips, or sour-cream-and-onion corn chips, or blue-cheese-cilantro corn chips or whatever. It never tastes anything like what it is supposed to – artificial “cheddar” doesn’t taste like “cheese” in any register. And it always leaves a nasty aftertaste of garlic powder. I’ve had cool-ranch corn chips that left behind the burn of cheap garlic powder (whilst tasting nothing like ranch dressing, of course).
And yet, because everyone I know has apparently ruined their sense of taste eating this crap, they’re continually foisting their latest vile discovery on me: “Oh, just try it – it really does taste like peppermint and anchovies! It’s amazing!”
Exactly. And “restricted menu” is generally a good sign, for me. I haven’t tried any of the local food trucks, though, since they’ve been legal in Chicago, but the food I’ve had elsewhere has been pretty darned good.
As it happens, I just wrote a blog post on the subject.
The two trends I call out in this piece are 1.) Mason jars as drinking glasses (a particular affliction in Louisville, but I’ve seen it elsewhere) and 2.) the 8oz. burger, which is entirely too damn much burger.
Some places just call for Mason jar glasses. Lucille’s BBQ uses them, as does Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill(s).