Off Topic > Food & Drink
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:
--- Quote from: ian on 23 April, 2015, 10:39:32 am ---Do we have a food rant thread? All those bad, disappointing culinary experiences should have a home.
--- End quote ---
*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:
--- Quote from: ian on 23 April, 2015, 10:39:32 am ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.
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