Six food trends we hate
Every year, Toronto Life’s April edition names the current food and restaurant trends we love, hate and those with which we have a love-hate relationship. Here, in no particular order, are our hated trends for 2010
Hipster decor.
As we’ve seen with saloon doors, taxidermal beasts, laundry lines, ceramic dogs and airbrushed glamour shots, it is possible to try too hard to seem stylish.
Something ’licious this way comes.
Winterlicious—not an inspired name, but we learned to live with it—has spawned an army of awkwardly monikered offshoots: Summer-, Lobster-, County-, Greeka-, Burger-, Spring-, Winter De-, Winter Fabu-. There’s even a restaurant called Rawlicious. Enough with the ’licious.
Restaurants that require babelfish.
Haisai, Ame, Buca = hello, rain, hole. Foreign names = gimmicky.
No-reservation policies.
Sometimes you just want to plan your life (and not wait two hours for octopus balls, a pizza or a few slices of salami).
Secret supper clubs.
A small, exclusive, one-of-a-kind dinner with like-minded gourmands (i.e., an overpriced meal cooked by a sous in a weird location) is, like, so oughties.
Overwrought menu descriptions.
The heritage breed pig was bottle-fed acorn mash at a bucolic organic farm? The purple potatoes were hand-harvested by well-paid farmhands? In other words, meat and potatoes.
• See the seven food trends we love »
• See the five food trends we have a love-hate relationship with »
(Illustration: Jack Dylan)
Anyone over the ‘burger’ trend yet? Geez, they’re on every street corner. And poutine is catching up too!
I dont understand how you can say it is a gimmick to give a forgein name to a restaurant. Especially Haisai! Michaels wife is from Okinawa and Haisai means sincere greeting. I am sorry to hear it angers you when people use their heritage to help create a restaurant, I will try to have them change it to your mother tongue, english.
I also feel it is important for diners to know where there food comes from, if we do not celebrate the farms and farmers we are still going to see people shopping at the grocery store for meat and produce, a trend that us, as chefs, are trying very hard to move away from. I dont see an author for this article but I must say it is very uninspired and in my opinion, doing my harm than good for the restaurant business. Thanks for the support!
@ Ryan – 100% agree. I think that restaurant names in a foreign language are beautiful.
Re: No reservation policies – I’ll wait forever for that pizza. It’s so good.
Re: Secret supper clubs – sorry you were never invited. Don’t hate on people who love the mystery of wondering when the next dinner will be, where it will be, who the chef is, what the menu is… oh yeah… you “just want to plan your life”.
I’ll just stop commenting here. I hate your whole list.
I avoid ‘licious events alltogether…not a good indication of the quality of the resto…although there are exceptions.
I hate the no reservations policy…for this reason I have yet to try Pizza Libretto or Guu…I am told I am missing out. As for the secret supper clubs…they have their place. It appears to some people. The recent menu of bugs though…I’ll forgo.
Called Libretto, asked to make a reservation, asked how many were coming, said 6, they said that would be no problem don’t worry. Show up at 8pm, and low and behold it’s a two hour wait. It’s a shame because I really LOVE the damn place at lunch, but if I can’t make a reservation for dinner forget it. We ended up dining at Foxley’s that night instead and that was a nightmare of a dive. I don’t understand the lack of reservations, a basic customer service. Anyway
Dislike of foreign names is, frankly, xenophobic. We live in a multi-cultural city with a myriad of languages spoken on any given street corner. Don’t like foreign words? Why do you live here?!?
@ Ryan: exactly. I”d really like to know which part of Ontario my “Ontario tomato” comes from, for instance.
The list is ignorant and bitchy.
@Ryan totally agree – to say that Foreign restaurant names are gimmicky in a city renowned for its diversity is ethnocentric and downright ignorant. And yes in the case of Haisai, the owner’s wife is Japanese and her influence has been instrumental in the success of the restaurant.