Make It Stop: 8 Food Trends We Don’t Want to See in 2017

For every awesome food trend – read Cronuts, uni, and salted egg yolks – there’s an equally opposite and irritating food trend waiting in line (or on the line, as the case may be).

Here, in my humble opinion, are the most atrocious, annoying, and all-around awful food trends of 2016 (in no particular order).

Tasting Menus

Okay. Not all tasting menus. Just those with more than, say, 6 courses. (And those wherein the time between courses is more than 10 minutes. Do the math.) I love food as much as anyone – more, likely, since it’s my job to write about it – and I’ve been known to order three or more entrees just to taste the rainbow of a restaurant’s flavors. But c’mon, man. 12 courses? 21 courses? Six is my cap. After that, my palate goes sense blind, I can’t remember what I ate two plates before, and I’m my bangry (bored + angry).

Charcoal-Flavored Everything

One word: Yuck. Chefs are artist. On that we agree. But unlike Picasso or Braques or Van Gogh, their medium must be edible. So while we appreciate the “out of the box” thinking with regard to ingredients, charcoal is not something we want to eat or sip.  [pagebreak]

No Plates

This may be the new millennia, Post Modern era, but for real… I need a f’ing plate. There are only two occasions for cardboard and ripped brown bag placements acting as plates: If you’re eating pizza or in a highchair. 

Brobdignagian Ice Cubes

Enormous ice cubes became cool – get it? – somewhere around 2013 and have since been spotted in every hipster enclave between Williamsburg and Silver Lake. I’ll give you that they have their upside: less drink dilution, no weird freezer flavors, and fewer ugly air bubbles in your purdy cocktail’s ice. The downside, unfortunately, is that they’re energy inefficient. The machine used to make this artisanal ice takes three days to produce what a regular ice machine could make in one day. Then, of course, the cubes have to be stored in dry ice and hand delivered in a truck. Lastly, they’re just dumb.

Molecular Gastronomy

Time was that you could order a simple pot de crème with whipped cream. Order this three word chocolate delight today and you’ve got a 50/50 chance you’ll get something that explodes in your mouth or is topped with coffee air. It may also be on fire, leaving a trail of dry ice meant to look like nimbus clouds, or both. Jose Andres, the Roca Brothers, and Ferran Adria, fair enough. But the salad guy at the Greek Deli near my office has a pipette and syringe? Stop the madness please, and bring me some chocolate pudding with whip cream. Thanks. [pagebreak]

Witty Sandwich Boards That Aren’t Witty

When witty sandwich board started popping up outside coffee shops and on Instagram a few years back, we all laughed at their clever plays on words. Today, if they don’t make me at least smirk, I kick them over and then run away very fast. Sandwich boards trying to be witty but failing – and that’s most of them – are a public nuisance. They obstruct foot traffic, waste precious chalk, and could break your nose in a tornado.

Cryptic Menus

Last night I went to Scandinavian restaurant on whose menu appeared the following appetizer: salmon, crème fraiche, capers, dill. I didn’t ask for clarification – my mistake – and instead ordered what I imagined would be some form of smoked salmon, perhaps fancied up with the addition of sourdough rounds. What I received were fried fish cakes. Two lessons here: 1) Never assume; 2) Adjectives are important. 

Overly Descriptive Menus

The flip side of the cryptic menu is the overly descriptive menu. On these overly lengthy lists, adjectives are tossed around with zero regard for relevance or necessity. You know the ones. They describe your goat cheese omelet with fries and salad as crispy potato slices and exotic bitter greens served over pan seared fresh-cracked eggs stuffed with melted goat cheese. More than pretentious, these menus are time-wasting tree-killers. Burn them at the stake. Or on the grill. Or in your fireplace. Just burn them.