Food Trends, Worst Food Trends, Culinary Trends, Chefs Dislike, Chef’s Worst Trends, What the chefs hate
Here are their picks and answers:
Silver Lining
Chef Kerry Simon (Simon at Palms Place / Cathouse in Las Vegas, NV and LA Market / Simon LA in Los Angeles, CA)
I like new trends and creativity.
Chef Gabe Thompson (L’Artusi / dell’anima / Anfora in New York, NY)
I like everything as long as it is done well, seasoned appropriately, and tastes delicious.
The pig has had a really good year. It has become the de rigueur menu staple showing up in almost every dish, including desert. So is this another bandwagon trend? Is pork the new foam, which was the new fusion, which was the new blackened everything Cajun craze?
Do food professionals embrace the idea of culinary trends? We asked some respected chefs around the country about their least favorite culinary trend.
CHEFS’ BEEFS
August 8, 2010
The Trend of Trending
Chef Matt Jennings (Farmstead, Providence, RI)
I think the media does an injustice by declaring sous-vide, pork belly, David Chang, molecular gastronomy, micro greens... whatever, as a trend.
Chef Erik Desjarlais (Evangeline, Portland, ME)
Fashion goes out of style, food shouldn’t. Nose to Tail cooking is not a trend. It has been going on for centuries.
Chef Cesare Casella (Salumeria Rosi, New York, NY)
Most culinary trends are motivated by marketing strategies, which can be viewed as insulting to the products that go into creating beautiful dishes.
Chef John Besh (Restaurant August, New Orleans, LA)
The thing with the newest trends that I dislike the most is that if we aren't careful cooking, we’ll become too cerebral and less soulful.
Molecular Gastronomy
Chef Chris Santos (The Stanton Social, New York, NY)
To me, it's not cooking. It takes the craft out of it.
Chef Joshua Whigham (The Bazaar by Jose Andres, Los Angeles, CA)
It makes it sound like they are using a super collider or something.
Chef Ivy Stark (Dos Caminos, New York, NY)
I'm not crazy about molecular gastronomy, although there are people who are doing some interesting and delicious things with it, like Grant Achatz. Not unlike Mexican food, it has been really poorly executed too often.
Gastro-hipsters
Chef Jimmy Bradley (The Red Cat / The Harrison, New York, NY)
Mixologists with mustaches. The whole facial hair and little glasses. There is no such thing as a ‘bar-chef!’ It’s so one dimensional and way too self important.
Nouvelle Cuisine
Chef Andrea Cavaliere (Ceccioni's West Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA)
French nouveau cuisine. Luckily, it only lasted through the 80s!
Menu Descriptions
Chef Joey Campanaro (The Little Owl, New York, NY)
Adding the letter ‘y’ to words like lettuce to describe something really gets me bummed out.... But the word “lettucey” really makes me upset. It isn’t even a word.
Beefed Up
Chef Michelle Bernstein (Michy’s / Sra. Martinez, Miami, FL)
I just think we have more steak houses than we could ever withstand. I love steak houses, but my goodness, enough is enough.
Chef Amanda Freitag (The Harrison, New York, NY)
Burgers (even though I love them, enough already).
Shooting & Tweeting
Chef Zak Pelaccio (Fatty Crab / Fatty ‘Cue / Cabrito, New York, NY)
I do see quite a few people photographing the food before they eat it and then blogging or tweeting (twittering?) from their dinner tables. I keep forgetting that the Romantic era is, and has been, long gone.
