To me, it goes like this:
Not pretentious:
Q: Hey, what’d you have for lunch today?
A: A BLT with a fried egg! It was pretty good - have you been to The Silver Bravo? They do some cool stuff with their sandwiches.
Pretentious:
Q: Hey, what’d you have for lunch today?
A: Oh, a duck egg BLT on wheat berry bread with wasabi mayo. From The Silver Bravo. You probably haven’t heard of it.
My only point is that the ingredients alone don’t mean the meal will be good. If the roast beef is terrible, it doesn’t matter what trendy cheese you put on it.
Maybe I need better friends, because I know lots of pretenders. We used to go to Ted’s for lunch on occasion and everyone would get the Bison – not health conscious people mind you, who could also just get a lean beef, but skinny people who were duped by the gimmick and convinced themselves that the bison tasted better.
And you nailed my criticism of Ray’s. I had the bone marrow burger, and in addition to the burger itself being way too large to make even a mediocre sandwich, the bone marrow added a layer of lubricant that served to make the whole thing fall apart before I was halfway through. It was a classic case of an interesting ingredient making the end product inferior.
Or if they, say, raved about a certain sandwich on facebook without offering up any reason for its greatness other than its trendy ingredients?
Judging from a lot of Facebook feeds, including my own, you’re in the minority.
I do post a lot of food pics, pretty much of what I’m cooking on any given day. I also post other stuff - links to news articles, birds I see in my yard, etc etc.
You know what I get the comments on? The food pics. I always get a ton of comments, people asking for recipes, people commenting about similar stuff they’ve made, etc. etc.
I get it that some people don’t like food pics. So skip 'em. Block that person if they do it to much. But it’s not some sort of personality flaw, or something that absolutely noone likes.
If it’s not any good, then what’s wrong with it is it’s not any good.
Who said that it was?
Have you considered that maybe they just want something different now and then? Especially when it’s something that is usually hard to find? I love Chinese food, but I’m not a huge fan of bitter melon. I’d usually rather have fried string beans, bok choi or eggplant as my veggie. But on the rare occasions that I go into a restaurant that has bitter melon, I’ll order it, simply because I don’t get many chances to eat it and it’s nice to have a change now and then.
Who cares? I genuinely don’t like PF Chang’s. Everything I’ve had there has been cloyingly, absurdly sweet, and I don’t paying good money chicken covered in what tastes like orange sugar syrup. If you ask me straight up, I’ll tell you that I think it’s pretty gross.
But I have friends that go there. When they post about their delicious meal at PF Chang’s, I think to myself “Good, I’m glad they are having fun.” My reaction is generally not to go on a message board and rant about the sad state of American Chinese food these days. If I did, that would be condescending and obnoxious, kind of like the OP.
Yeah, except in my opinion the quote from the OP is a lot closer to the former than the latter.
Oh, and I bet if they’d used vivid language to describe the deliciousness of the food, you’d be LESS likely to make fun of it, right? :rolleyes:
It has bacon and wasabi. It sounds good. I can read the damn ingredients and tell it sounds good. The ingredients aren’t “trendy”, its just fucking food. I’m sorry, if wasabi and duck eggs are so exotic to you that you react like this, then yes, I do wonder how adventurous an eater you are. And I might sarcastically imply you eat bologna and white bread at every meal. I mean, we aren’t talking about something completely nuts here- it’s a BLT with an egg and some spice. BFD.
Personally I like wasabi because chili spice upsets my heartburn. I use wasabi* in a lot of places other people wouldn’t, not to be trendy but because it adds a kick without the need of tums later. Also I think the color is pretty, and I like pretty food.
*it isn’t real wasabi it’s horseradish because you can’t get wasabi here, but whatever. It’s green and I call it that
The OP’s example isn’t pretentious. Pretentious is fancying up peasant food and trying to make like it’s hawt cewsine. The reason people ate hog jowls, pig’s feet, bird’s nest soup and chitterlings is because some righ bloke already buggered off with the rest of the pig and the eggs! Stop trying to make it sound good. It isn’t.
methinks the lady doth protest too much.
The only example of “fusion” in the dish the OP’s former friend enjoyed is the Wasabi. BLT is pretty basic American food & duck eggs are also in the Western tradition. Chipotle mayo would be the expected choice here in Texas–ooh, the chef flavored the mayo with a Japanese version of horseradish instead! Fusion is a more radical mix of different cuisines…
Really, if you are a picky eater or live in a culturally deprived area, no problem. But why get offended when other people occasionally try a new combo? They already know not to invite you to come along. (I don’t know any places that offer only preciously trendy foods; some offer a few but also serve fine versions of old standbys.)
Some people really need to get out more, instead of fantasizing about ridiculously silly places serving only hipsters.
I’m as adventurous as they come when it comes to food and have even worked as a chef in the (somewhat distant) past. I like that people are experiencing new things with food, but I’m sick to death of the descriptive gymnastics some diners and food service professionals engage in. I don’t need to know every tiny little detail about your ingredients, down to the condiments. That’s the kind of crap that makes me roll my eyes at people like the one mentioned in the OP.
I don’t see many folks in this thread who have much of a problem with people trying new things.
And then I might look at it and say I’m not much of a fennel fan but salmon pomegranate salad sounds awesome. Then I’d add whatever I happened to have laying around and post it to Facebook for you to comment on.
The feedback loop is the point of it all – inspiring each other with off-the-wall ideas. That’s what pancakes3 doesn’t seem to get.
I would like to introduce you to a concept that’s apparently foreign to you, steronz: taste is subjective! You might feel that Angus beef is better than bison because you like the high fat content. That would put you in the majority, in fact. You might object to the slight “gaminess” of the bison. I, on the other hand, actually like the “gaminess” and prefer my meat with less fat. My tastes also change with my mood. Sometimes I feel like a filet mignon wrapped in bacon and cooked in butter. Other times I feel like a bison t-bone with homemade Cajun rub.
TL,DR version: Substitutions aren’t always “pointless” and the fact that you like something doesn’t mean it “tastes better” to everyone else.
nm
When I was a young cook trying to improve myself, my instinct was always to see what else I could add to a dish. That’s not the case anymore. If I were making a BLT for my hypothetical restaurant I’d keep it simple and focus on getting the best ingredients I could–awesome bacon (my home-cured garlic bacon is crazy good), really good tomatoes, great bread.
But that’s my style, and it’s not everybody’s. I appreciate people who add new elements to dishes, but with each disparate element added the skill required of the chef goes up. If Thomas Keller puts together a dish with six seemingly unrelated ingredients, you can be fairly sure that every single one of them has a good reason to be there. That’s probably not the case with a mediocre chef just out of culinary school.
IMO, it’s not the upscale restaurants who are the worst for this–it’s the chains. They’re the ones likely to serve up ribs with maple-chipotle-bourbon-hickory-honey-raspberry-garlic BBQ sauce (which will taste suspiciously like KC Masterpiece). We ate at Red Lobster a while back and it struck me that nearly everything on the menu was a mishmash of way too many elements; I guess it’s a way to try to distinguish yourself while still using low quality ingredients.
The sandwich described in the OP could easily go either way. If the bacon and the egg are cooked just right, the bread is perfectly toasted, the tomato is ripe (unlikely in May, but theoretically), and the wasabi really complements the classic BLT flavors, then this could work. But a shitty BLT doesn’t become unshitty when you slap on a duck egg and wasabi mayo.
And can we stop hating on bologna? I love me some Perry County Round Steak now and then.
See, the thing is, I tend to like a lot of off cuts and offal (not all of it–I’m not sold on chitterlings, but I love tripe, for instance.) I actually do think a lot of it tastes awesome, but I grew up on that food. The weird thing for me is seeing stuff like oxtails being sold at premium prices. I think it’s up to about $6/lb here at the market where chuck is at around $2.50-$3/lb. It irritates me that the “cheap” cuts of meat I loved so much as a kid aren’t so cheap anymore.
I can’t get too worked up about the OP. My favorite food tends to be peasant food prepared well. I love that people are rediscovering these wonderful simple, rustic foods. But I do like experimental cuisine a lot, too. And I agree there’s some places that seem to think that by adding whatever the trend-of-the-month is to their menus (kimchi, sriracha, duck eggs, etc.) makes up for mediocre food preparation otherwise. That said, most of the places I’ve been to that incorporate truly interesting and different ingredients seem to know what they’re doing and do a pretty good job of it.
At the end of the day, it’s only food. Nothing to get too worked up over.
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that so many people have missed the OP’s point and continue to argue it even when it has been explained.
But the OP is 100% correct. The facebook status update was clearly just to show off how cool this person was for trying such a hip, unique sandwich. It had nothing to do with making a good recommendation or sharing some important information. It was showing off, and being a pretty arrogant foodie while doing so.
It’s 100% obvious that such a sandwich was created only to cater to people looking to try hip, new things that are special, unique, etc, and not in some quest to make a perfect BLT.
What the OP is not saying, of course, is that all food should be bland and predictable and no one should ever try to make anything new (which is what some of you are making it sound like). He’s not criticizing the sandwich without trying it. The OP made no comment about the sandwich being good or bad or anything other than making the (very obvious) claim that this sandwich existed only to cater to an illogical/irrational desire to produce “hipster” style food. I think anyone with half a brain cell can admit that anyone making such a facebook post about this sandwich is being extremely hipster, and the person selling such a sandwich is being pretty hipster as well.
Not just an egg, but a duck egg!
Not just bread, but wheat bread with some unprocessed wheat kernels in it!
Not just mayo but wasabi mayo (which is undoubtedly not actually wasabi)!
It doesn’t make the sandwich good or bad, but it is a fair observation to make, that such things are just to appeal to a hipster/foodie audience and nothing more.
Because they aren’t focusing on creativity. They are focused on fancy ingredients. You can be creative with anything. Yet these places constantly have to have only fancy ingredients, which makes no sense.
It’s not like chefs even tend to give out their ingredients. If you make something good, you want to keep it secret so that others can’t make it. The only reason to mention ingredients is if they themselves are the selling point. It only makes sense if people think “fancy ingredients” means “good food.” And it doesn’t. It can, but not necessarily.
As for the OP’s Facebook post, my problem is that it’s nothing fancy at all, yet the lady is making it sound like it is. That’s pretentious. She’s even got the stereotypical “heaven” in there.
If you don’t see that as pretentious, I don’t know what to tell you. But I will point out that, based on the comments from foodies, (even those who claim they aren’t) I don’t think we use the same definition of the word. Every single one of you has put out a pretentious vibe, calling other people’s food trash or pretending like we don’t know that taste is subjective. You aren’t some all-knowledgeable person about food who is better than all of us peasants.
No one likes kale.
I’m tired of it showing up in my food. Last month I had an amazing white bean and sausage stew that would have been absolutely perfect with some spinach or chard, or maybe even collard greens, but the chef decided to be “trendy” and used goddamned kale. So I had to gnaw my way through stringy, bitter, green cardboard until I just pushed it all to the side.
I make a fantastic Portuguese kale soup. And I like that fried kale they put on salads.
I like kale. I haven’t noticed it turning up in restaurant food. The only time I have it is when I make it at home. (But I prefer collard greens.)