the food rant thread

[ian]

Do we have a food rant thread? All those bad, disappointing culinary experiences should have a home.

Anyway.

Burgers. Londontown is full of 'upmarket' burger joints now. Every-bloody*-where. Byrons sprout like toadstools overnight, and if it's not a Byrons, it's something similar. Gourmet this. Meat that. There will come a point when entire streets are just a sweaty crush of Nandos and Byrons. The final reckoning will be Cow vs. Chicken. Some kind of cross-species meaty West Side Story. When all the buildings are full, they appear in vans, a wagon train from Hackney. Someone offered me a burger with kimchee yesterday. Fuck it, Hackney gets further east every day, it's like its on its own tectonic plate.

Since I got off the vegetarian bus at meaty central, I confess I've sampled a few burgers. I like burgers. It's meat in a sandwich. A simple pleasure. One I'd forgone for several years. I'll be honest, I don't want creativity. A good burger requires a good slab of fresh meat, optional cheese, lettuce, onion, and tomato. That's it. No kimchee, no single herd origin ripened alpaca cheese, no alfalfa sprouts. Just stop. And for some reason, in 2015, queuing is a desirable thing. For a meat sandwich.

The thing is: these burgers are a bit dull. They're overcooked, overpriced, overdecorated. I've just paid £8 for a sandwich. Oh look, they've served my wine in a jam jar. Erm. And why do I even have wine with a burger. This is not France (ironically, the best burger I ever had, and as a former resident of the American colonies I've had many burgers, was in France – some unaspiring place near Annecy – as far as I could tell they'd forgone the grill and just left it out in the sun for several minutes, and the waiter didn't have to give me the cow's biography).

This came to mind when I had, for the first time in like forever, a McD's the other day. If you're waiting for a plane at Lisbon airport, don't expect gastronomy. I wasn't expecting much, but I actually enjoyed. Admittedly, they'd added extra nostalgia sauce to my Big Mac.

Gourmetification is what I call it. Simple foods get extravagantly dressed up. Gastropubs do it all the time.
You can't order a full English breakfast without getting some kind of ethnically diverse sausage, a meaty immigrant to rouse your inner Farage.

*Not bloody though, they're generally most insistent on it being medium, which translated to British cooking, means it may as well have sat in the blast radius of a nuclear explosion.

[Basil]

Do we have a food rant thread? All those bad, disappointing culinary experiences should have a home.

*Has a vague memory*

Ah yes, but it was a Food Grumble rather than a rant thread, so I suppose that's different.

https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=87869.msg1804600#msg1804600

[menthel]

Do we have a food rant thread? All those bad, disappointing culinary experiences should have a home.

Anyway.

Burgers. Londontown is full of 'upmarket' burger joints now. Every-bloody*-where. Byrons sprout like toadstools overnight, and if it's not a Byrons, it's something similar. Gourmet this. Meat that. There will come a point when entire streets are just a sweaty crush of Nandos and Byrons. The final reckoning will be Cow vs. Chicken. Some kind of cross-species meaty West Side Story. When all the buildings are full, they appear in vans, a wagon train from Hackney. Someone offered me a burger with kimchee yesterday. Fuck it, Hackney gets further east every day, it's like its on its own tectonic plate.

Since I got off the vegetarian bus at meaty central, I confess I've sampled a few burgers. I like burgers. It's meat in a sandwich. A simple pleasure. One I'd forgone for several years. I'll be honest, I don't want creativity. A good burger requires a good slab of fresh meat, optional cheese, lettuce, onion, and tomato. That's it. No kimchee, no single herd origin ripened alpaca cheese, no alfalfa sprouts. Just stop. And for some reason, in 2015, queuing is a desirable thing. For a meat sandwich.

The thing is: these burgers are a bit dull. They're overcooked, overpriced, overdecorated. I've just paid £8 for a sandwich. Oh look, they've served my wine in a jam jar. Erm. And why do I even have wine with a burger. This is not France (ironically, the best burger I ever had, and as a former resident of the American colonies I've had many burgers, was in France – some unaspiring place near Annecy – as far as I could tell they'd forgone the grill and just left it out in the sun for several minutes, and the waiter didn't have to give me the cow's biography).

This came to mind when I had, for the first time in like forever, a McD's the other day. If you're waiting for a plane at Lisbon airport, don't expect gastronomy. I wasn't expecting much, but I actually enjoyed. Admittedly, they'd added extra nostalgia sauce to my Big Mac.

Gourmetification is what I call it. Simple foods get extravagantly dressed up. Gastropubs do it all the time.
You can't order a full English breakfast without getting some kind of ethnically diverse sausage, a meaty immigrant to rouse your inner Farage.

*Not bloody though, they're generally most insistent on it being medium, which translated to British cooking, means it may as well have sat in the blast radius of a nuclear explosion.

The fuckers probably used the word artisanal as well. The only thing I see when I see that word used are the last four letters. Fuckers.

[hellymedic]

We either eschew or mock food with too many adjectives...

[Mr Larrington]

And another thing, Mr Sainsbury's House of Toothy Comestibles!  You appear to have stopped selling your own-brand not-butter.  I do not wish to spend double the amount on poncey Lurpak, I am boycotting Country Life because J Rotten, and Anchor tastes funny and not in a good way.

Kerrygold it is, then.

[ian]

The thing about the burger is that is a sublimely simple thing that should shine alone on the ingredients. It's something that benefits from simplicity. Slapping kimchee on top does not improve a burger. I've been to Seoul and no one offered me a burger with kimchee on it. Burgers in Seoul were all-American affairs, a brass band would pipe up the Stars and Stripes and they would be served by cheerleaders in an nuclear test explosion of pom-poms. Actually, that might have just been the restaurant. Shit, why not stick chicken chow mein on top or a slice of banoffee pie. Oh god, I daren't look, someone probably has.

And the fact that most of these new wave burgers are just chains. If you want indifferently cooked meat patties, you can get them for less than £8 and without queuing in the rain (you don't even have to get out of your car). I mean, seriously, Five Guys. People queue for Five Guys burgers? They serve greasy-wrapped disappointment in a bun. Even US calorie mountains don't eat them and those are the sort of people who'd eat a trash can if you melted cheese on it. MEATliquor (it has be written that way, just to prickle my sanity), marginally better burger if you like Exxon Valdez levels of grease ejaculated down your front, but a queue that stretches and includes people taking selfies. In a queue for a sandwich. Are you fucking mental? OK, that's not really a question.

Truly great burgers are circumstantial. For instance, right-minded people are circumspect about declaring their love for White Castle. Come 3am and you're lost in West Virginia, and you see those bright lights and the promise of a dozen dinky little burgers. Come the tidal wave of salivation. Give me a megaphone because I've just written a meaty love song. OK, I'm not convinced White Castle burgers actually contain meat. And as for that French burger, in the rarified air of the alps, it was gloriously underdone, yet like biting into a buttery meat cloud. Effortless.

I forgot pickles earlier. Good burgers require pickles. Cheese, not so much. Bacon definitely not.

[pcolbeck]

And stop making the damn burgers so thick ! Posh burgers always seem to be massive. That's no good , you need to be able to get the burger and bun into your mouth together, its a sandwich the whole point is the combination of bun, salad pickles and burger not for you to have to dismantle it and eat the constituent parts separately.

[Basil]

I forgot pickles earlier. Good burgers require pickles. Cheese, not so much. Bacon definitely not.

And a cold, fat, flacid, stupidly large mushroom,  absolutely not.

I like mushrooms, but I've never enjoyed a mushroom in a burger.  Or ones that come unbidden with a steak.  Nasty things

[ian]

And stop making the damn burgers so thick ! Posh burgers always seem to be massive. That's no good , you need to be able to get the burger and bun into your mouth together, its a sandwich the whole point is the combination of bun, salad pickles and burger not for you to have to dismantle it and eat the constituent parts separately.

Yes, those spherical burgers. Defeats the point since you can't cook them properly. To warm up the middle, the outer layers must be cooked into a chewy, dry desert. And this being Britain, where the thought of rare meat alone will probably kill, to turn the middle of the meat planet grey, they must cook them for hours. So basically, it's a giant meaty cricket ball in a bun. Which people will swoon over as they chew and chew and chew and basically give themselves a facial workout. A couple of those and you have the kind of jaw muscles that can chew their way into a bank vault.

Mushrooms in a burger. Eek!

Eating burgers with a knife and fork. Only passable in Wimpy.

[Basil]

There's still a Wimpy in Carmarthen.  It's exactly how you remember Wimpys to be. 

[ian]

There's still a Wimpy in Carmarthen.  It's exactly how you remember Wimpys to be. 

I moved to this town because it had a Wimpy. Then two weeks later it closed. OK, Wimpy wasn't the only reason, and no, I don't think I've been in one since about 1988. But I liked the comforting thought of having my formative dining experience nearby. They missed a trick by not serving drinks in pretend jam jars and forcing people to queue outside.

In other news.

Mushrooms. Or alien space fruit.

[Mrs Pingu]

And stop making the damn burgers so thick ! Posh burgers always seem to be massive. That's no good , you need to be able to get the burger and bun into your mouth together, its a sandwich the whole point is the combination of bun, salad pickles and burger not for you to have to dismantle it and eat the constituent parts separately.

Amen. You shouldn't need to cut up a burger with cutlery!

We have a local joint called the boozy cow. I hate the "here's a burger on a bit of greaseproof paper on a tray" thing (what's wrong with a plate FFS?), but the burger itself was beautifully rare. Mooo.

[L CC]

Yeah, whatever happened to round white plates?
Why do I keep getting food on a chopping board, in a mini metal bucket, on a fecking slate....

[rr]

Good I was about to post a food rant anyway:
Hain Celestial Group trading as Linda McCartney, your vegiburgers are just like beef burgers, 80s, pre-BSE, made from Jet washed sludge and floor sweepings and sold from a clapped out van 80s burgers, the ones so rank that even John Gummer wouldn't feed them to his kids.
If you are going to sell imitation meat, imitate decent meat.

[ian]

Yeah, whatever happened to round white plates?
Why do I keep getting food on a chopping board, in a mini metal bucket, on a fecking slate....

Well, back in the artisanal times, this was how food was served. Fries came in little metal pails (with or without a sheet of Izal), like they'd been milked out of the fry cow by busy, little fry-maids. Chefs, caught waiting for the plate to be invented (an awkward time for gastro-kitchens, for sure), had to hurl food out on chopping board itself. Seasoned by desperation were those dreadful days.

I swear I got a pie on a slate the other week. Not quite a slate, more some old bit of blackboard from the 1970s, probably made out of asbestos and cancer. A pie on a pretend slate, like at some point in the distant past that's how we served food. With a little nervous broccoli forest, edging off towards the table, knowing that no rim stood in its way. Driven by the thought that it could be in Stoke Newington by teatime. Cry freedom my little brassicas. And worse, this little pie cost £16. It's just a pie. What can you put in a pie that costs £16? You could gold-plate a chicken for less. It was like they'd introduced a suicidal chicken with anorexia to a few cubes of surly pancetta (I'm letting that pass, bacon bacon bacon). Admittedly, I was probably being surcharged for the three pieces of Houdini broccoli. The pie was more air than a hot air balloon. I mean, it didn't taste bad as pies go, but it was still a pie. It wasn't an Heston Blumenthal pie made out or heliumated foie gras and unicorn frisson.

[Cudzoziemiec]

surly pancetta

Don't give them ideas, they've got enough silly names as it is.

[menthel]

And stop making the damn burgers so thick ! Posh burgers always seem to be massive. That's no good , you need to be able to get the burger and bun into your mouth together, its a sandwich the whole point is the combination of bun, salad pickles and burger not for you to have to dismantle it and eat the constituent parts separately.

Agreed- we often make our own burgers at home and the do not get made 3 feet thick. They are thin and then squashed even further when cooking. Thin patties are good patties.

I blame that daft american woman and her song about fat women.

[lahoski]

_{Kimchee in a burger is really nice.}

[Mr Larrington]

_{Kimchee in a burger is really nice.}

_{So is BACON}

[Gattopardo]

Do we have a food rant thread? All those bad, disappointing culinary experiences should have a home.

Anyway.

Burgers. Londontown is full of 'upmarket' burger joints now. Every-bloody*-where. Byrons sprout like toadstools overnight, and if it's not a Byrons, it's something similar. Gourmet this. Meat that. There will come a point when entire streets are just a sweaty crush of Nandos and Byrons. The final reckoning will be Cow vs. Chicken. Some kind of cross-species meaty West Side Story. When all the buildings are full, they appear in vans, a wagon train from Hackney. Someone offered me a burger with kimchee yesterday. Fuck it, Hackney gets further east every day, it's like its on its own tectonic plate.

Since I got off the vegetarian bus at meaty central, I confess I've sampled a few burgers. I like burgers. It's meat in a sandwich. A simple pleasure. One I'd forgone for several years. I'll be honest, I don't want creativity. A good burger requires a good slab of fresh meat, optional cheese, lettuce, onion, and tomato. That's it. No kimchee, no single herd origin ripened alpaca cheese, no alfalfa sprouts. Just stop. And for some reason, in 2015, queuing is a desirable thing. For a meat sandwich.

The thing is: these burgers are a bit dull. They're overcooked, overpriced, overdecorated. I've just paid £8 for a sandwich. Oh look, they've served my wine in a jam jar. Erm. And why do I even have wine with a burger. This is not France (ironically, the best burger I ever had, and as a former resident of the American colonies I've had many burgers, was in France – some unaspiring place near Annecy – as far as I could tell they'd forgone the grill and just left it out in the sun for several minutes, and the waiter didn't have to give me the cow's biography).

This came to mind when I had, for the first time in like forever, a McD's the other day. If you're waiting for a plane at Lisbon airport, don't expect gastronomy. I wasn't expecting much, but I actually enjoyed. Admittedly, they'd added extra nostalgia sauce to my Big Mac.

Gourmetification is what I call it. Simple foods get extravagantly dressed up. Gastropubs do it all the time.
You can't order a full English breakfast without getting some kind of ethnically diverse sausage, a meaty immigrant to rouse your inner Farage.

*Not bloody though, they're generally most insistent on it being medium, which translated to British cooking, means it may as well have sat in the blast radius of a nuclear explosion.

The fuckers probably used the word artisanal as well. The only thing I see when I see that word used are the last four letters. Fuckers.

That fuck there is some one else that feels the same.

I feel your pain comrade.

[woollypigs]

Ian I agree, a good burger is just a good bit of meat in a bun that you can fit - and do not have to build before it is not Lego - into your mouth.

The best one I have had is right off the bbq into a bun with a bit of pepper and tomato sauce. Maybe some onion and salad.

I have given up getting a burger in a Gastro pub, big round ball filled with random bits of grass, three chips and some random sauce that is either drawn onto the plate or in a very small pot that you can fit the chips into, that you have got all IKEA on.

[Otto]

And another thing, Mr Sainsbury's House of Toothy Comestibles!  You appear to have stopped selling your own-brand not-butter.  I do not wish to spend double the amount on poncey Lurpak, I am boycotting Country Life because J Rotten, and Anchor tastes funny and not in a good way.

Kerrygold it is, then.

The Dutchy Organic one is nice

[Otto]

Ian I agree, a good burger is just a good bit of meat in a bun that you can fit - and do not have to build before it is not Lego - into your mouth.

The best one I have had is right off the bbq into a bun with a bit of pepper and tomato sauce. Maybe some onion and salad.

I have given up getting a burger in a Gastro pub, big round ball filled with random bits of grass, three chips and some random sauce that is either drawn onto the plate or in a very small pot that you can fit the chips into, that you have got all IKEA on.

What hacks me off is when the burger comes on a wooden board or a slate with a cocktail stick holding it together and the chips arrive in a minature galvanized bucket or a plant pot... what's wrong with a plate ffs

[Ruthie]

And another thing, Mr Sainsbury's House of Toothy Comestibles!  You appear to have stopped selling your own-brand not-butter.  I do not wish to spend double the amount on poncey Lurpak, I am boycotting Country Life because J Rotten, and Anchor tastes funny and not in a good way.

Kerrygold it is, then.

The Dutchy Organic one is nice

Yeo Valley butter is lovely, and a proper yellow colour, not like that white forrin stuff.

[CrinklyLion]

Yeah, whatever happened to round white plates?
Why do I keep getting food on a chopping board, in a mini metal bucket, on a fecking slate....

https://twitter.com/wewantplates