Underdone vegetables, though this fad seems to have passed.
Me too - sort of. I mean, I like good dark chocolate, but I still like milk chocolate too (including some of the absurdly creamy/fatty stuff, like Lindor) - and I get that some peoples’ preferences will extend beyond my own - it’s just that I suspect sometimes, the preference isn’t about the chocolate - it’s a preference for being noticed as an extreme chocolate fancier. If there was such a thing as 110% cocoa, there would be people buying that and looking down their noses at the peasants who make do with 90%.
I’m not sure I get the need for the distinction. A product type that was previously dominated by a narrow variety of larger brands is “discovered” by smaller players - well, consumers discover and move to the smaller players. They usually start with an old recipe craft version of the item, and then branch out with exotic variations. Same as with music or art, where a new form is discovered, the rules get canonized, then broken one by one, etc…
For Hot Sauces, from Tabasco and a couple of others to the emergence of smaller-batch, crafted hot sauces, to the bazillion small-batch and large-brand variations we have today. My point to this OP is that, to me, when we’re at this spot of the lifecycle, it is almost like folks get desperate, picking a product attribute and spiking it past all reason. And it appears to happen across a wide variety of foods.
QFT.
I will add that while I’m a sucker for bitter, dark chocolate, I find putting odd ingredients in a chocolate for (what?) whimsy’s sake is just fucking gross. Ramen? Really? It was truly as disgusting as it sounds.
I gave up on Chardonnays a while ago.
Heirloom food. Mind you, I grow a number of heirloom vegetables in my garden myself but there’s nothing wrong with modern hybrids as part of the mix. Also, the reason some of those heirlooms became less common is that they have undesirable qualities - some heirloom carrots I grew were yes, very flavorful… and the texture of wood. They were suitable only for slow-cooker soups and stews and perhaps carving small statues.
Organic food. C’mon, really? The pristine globes of fruits and vegetables I see in the organic aisle I have to go :dubious: over, because the organic stuff in my garden tends to be a little nibbled on by various things and less than perfect in appearance. AND the stuff in the store is hideously overpriced. I had to laugh over some hydroponic organic stuff I saw once - sure, technically it’s organic and grown without pesticide but it still seems an oxymoron. And it’s not magic - I had a hydroponic garden for about 3 years recently. There’s nothing wrong with any of it, but agri-business food is what keeps the masses from starving, and too much organic food is waaaaaay overpriced.
The local food fad. Hey, nothing wrong with local, my backyard is about as local as you can get after all, but things like grapefruit and lemons just don’t grow in my region. I’m not giving up 75% of the fruit I eat in the name of “local” eating. And tea is definitely not going to grow in my area. Trade is good, that’s why people have been doing it since forever, including trading for non-local food items.
“Loaded” baked potatoes. To me, a baked potato is a baked potato with some salt or butter on top. Not a “creation” with 14,000 ingredients piled on top, entirely obscuring the potato. Hey, if you don’t like potatoes just have a bowl of sour cream, bacon bits, and 14 cheeses.
Cheese on everything. Really? Can I please have some vegetables without cheese sauce? Soup without cheese melted into it? If I want cheese I’ll eat cheese, otherwise, I want to taste some other flavor.
Artisinal bread. At some point I start to wonder what you’re trying to hide. What happened to basic bread, you know, flour (made from wheat), water, yeast, a pinch of salt?
I think that most “extreme” food fads are non-artisanal. They go away from high craft to embrace going over the top. High alcohol beer, super ultra hot sauce, crazy high fat deep fried abominations, they exist simply to show how far the creator can push the envelope.
Over Artisanal, I’d go for Grilled Cheese. You see recipes using super fancy breads and off the wall cheeses, with lots of other ingredients thrown in. Sorry, give me a nice plain bread, a couple of slices of American cheese, and toast it slowly in some butter, that is perfection in Grilled Cheese, all your fancy crap just ruins it.
Love the comment on grilled cheese.
As for extreme vs. artisanal - to the extent “artisanal” retains its original meanings related to mastery of craft, and hand-crafted attention, yes, that is different from extreme. But just like the word “green” when it comes to environmentally-conscious activities, “artisanal” has been somewhat co-opted - so it can be used in its original form, but also blurs into small-batch, fancy ingredients or pedigree - just twisted into some extreme interpretation…
I see the same thing with guitars - a Fender Stratocaster is the amazing product it is, in part because it was designed for manufacturability - it is simple, reliable and easy to disassemble and repair. Now you have “artisans” charging thousands of dollars for hand-built guitars that are Strats, but with mastodon ivory parts, titanium bridges, amazing woods, etc. And of course Fender is in on the game, with their Custom Shop. I appreciate a lot of it - hand-crafted attention can help a Strat end up sounding and playing great, but again, some crafters take this to an extreme…
But it lead to this abomination
Is it ok if I add bacon?
Is it double-smoked over special wood, with a hint of maple syrup, organic, happy-pig bacon?
Only if it is WordMan Approved.
Seriously, it’s made from vegetarian Duroc Hogs, every serious bacon eater knows Duroc is the best hog for bacon.
Edited to add, if you hurry, you can still buy one of their $180 hams from Williams Sonoma and have it for New Years.
Right. And that is not artisanship.
Again - I hear ya. But if you asked one of those small-batch brewers who lovingly overhops and adds exotic stuff to their brews if they considered their beer artisanal, wouldn’t you assume they would say Yes? You clearly disagree - and this thread was started because I disagree too in many, many cases - but it’s a YMMV thing, not a “there is one true definition of artisanal” thing…
In most cases, the reason was an unsuitability for mass production and long-distance transport–finicky growing requirements, lower yields, tenderness.
But that’s a large part of why, right there–because produce in grocery store organic aisles has to sell to customers accustomed to ‘perfect.’ So the real crop yield is effectively reduced even farther.
Duroc is great, but so is Berkshire. Actually, the best bacon and pork I’ve ever had were from Mangalica pigs, a Hungarian breed of curly-haired pig that is particularly fatty. (And a breed that also has found in-roads here in the US under the slightly different spelling Mangalitsa.) The shoulder from that beast looks finely marbled Wagyu. Wonderful pork.
You do have to be a little careful here, for one person’s “too hot” is another persons “not hot enough.” But I do agree that once you get deep into the extracts, it seems to be that craftsmanship is lost. Then again, there are exceptions like I mentioned above, with Dave’s Insanity Sauce actually being very tasty.
You always seem to walk that fine line well, **pulykamell **- you know your foodie stuff down to the geeky detail, but seem to approach food practically, not getting breathlessly worked up over artisanal, macho extremism. There are good ways to approach foodiness…
Yep, exactly.
How lovingly? 
I think that’s what real artisanship comes down to. Obviously not everybody’s tastes will be the same. But is the pursuit of a particular style done out of the producer’s own love and dedication to quality, or is it flash and fashion?
The really crazy thing with hot sauces… I can show a sort of respect to the ones that are just trying to get as hot as possible. At least there’s a clear goal there. But most hot sauces seem to actually be competing on how hot they can make the name of their product. Take “Pure Cap”, for instance. Not only is it not actually pure capsaicin, the last I checked, it’s actually milder than jalapeno. And then there are the ones that proudly proclaim that they’re made from habaneros or Indian ghost peppers or whatever, but they’re only at something like 1% concentration. Why not just use a milder pepper to begin with, if that’s what you were aiming for?