Right then, my dear readers, today we’re tackling a topic that directly affects the very foundation of human happiness: food. Or, more accurately, what passes for “food” in the modern era. Because frankly, the culinary landscape has become a minefield of absurdity, pretension, and outright inedible creations. It’s not about nourishment or comfort anymore; it’s about culinary crimes: when food goes too far. And it’s high time someone held these chefs accountable. Welcome back to The Manager’s Desk: A Daily Dose of Disappointment.
I remember a time when a meal was a meal. Simple, honest, and designed to fill your stomach and gladden your heart. Now? It’s an “experience,” an “adventure,” a “journey” – usually to the nearest fast-food joint afterward because you’re still starving and thoroughly confused. It’s a disgrace to grandmothers everywhere, I tell you!
The Tiny Terrors: Portions Designed for Pixies
My biggest gripe, bar none, is the scandalous portion sizes in these “fine dining” establishments. I recently had the dubious pleasure of visiting one such place, where the waiter, a young man with more piercings than common sense, presented me with what he called an “amuse-bouche.” It was a single, solitary pea, perched precariously on a tiny spoon, looking utterly bewildered. A single pea! I asked him, “Is this a joke? Am I supposed to amuse my bouche by chasing this tiny green sphere around the table?” He just gave me one of those condescending smiles.
Then came the main course. A sliver of fish, barely two inches long, adorned with three tiny dots of what they called “beetroot foam” and a single, artistic smear of something brown that might have been mud. It was presented on a plate the size of a frisbee, which only served to highlight the sheer emptiness of my meal. I paid fifty dollars for what amounted to a glorified appetizer! And these “small plates,” designed for “sharing”! Sharing what? A single bite of something obscure and expensive? It’s an absolute farce! It’s a conspiracy, I tell you, to make you spend more on their overpriced wine because your stomach is still rumbling. They think we’re all daft. Well, I’m not. My stomach has a very clear understanding of what a meal should entail, and it’s certainly more than a single artistic smear.
The Pretentious Presentation: Art Over Appetite
And the presentation! Oh, the sheer pretension of it all. They arrange these tiny morsels on vast plates like abstract art. A sprig of dill here, a random scattering of edible flowers there, a drizzle of sauce that looks suspiciously like spilled paint. It’s all about the “visual appeal,” they say. Well, I’m visually appealed to a plate that’s full of actual food, not an empty canvas with a few sad ingredients scattered about.
I once ordered a “deconstructed shepherd’s pie.” Deconstructed? It means you took it apart, made it cold, and served it in separate piles, doesn’t it? The mashed potatoes were in a little cylinder, the minced lamb was next to it, and the vegetables were arranged like a tiny, lonely garden. It tasted like sadness and confusion. Whatever happened to a good, hearty pie, bubbling hot, with all the flavors mingling together in a comforting embrace? This isn’t food; it’s a puzzle, and I’m not in the mood for games when I’m hungry!
The Ingredient Insanity: What ARE These Things?!
Then there are the ingredients themselves. “Foams,” “airs,” “gels,” “dusts,” “caviar” made from vegetables. What are these things?! I asked for mashed potatoes the other day, and they brought me something that looked like grey gruel. “It’s purple potato foam with activated charcoal, ma’am,” the young waiter, bless his heart, chirped. Activated what now? Just give me some proper mashed potatoes, made with real butter and a dollop of cream, not something that belongs in a science experiment!
And these bizarre flavor combinations! Sweet and savory, spicy and tart, all mashed together in one dish like a culinary car crash. “Salted caramel bacon donut.” Why?! Why would you do that? Some things are meant to be separate. A donut is a donut. Bacon is bacon. They don’t need to hold hands and skip through a field of confusion on my plate! It’s an abomination! And don’t even get me started on “fusion cuisine.” It usually just means they took two perfectly good cuisines and ruined both of them simultaneously. A taco with sushi? Good heavens, the very thought makes my stomach churn!
And the relentless pursuit of “exotic” ingredients. Goji berries, acai bowls, spirulina, yuzu, finger limes, sumac. All flown in from the ends of the earth at immense cost, and often with minimal actual flavor. My goodness, a good old apple from the local orchard has more goodness in it, and it doesn’t cost a king’s ransom. It’s all just marketing, designed to make you feel inferior if you’re not eating some obscure plant that grows only on the side of a volcanic crater. Give me a good, honest potato any day. Baked, mashed, roasted – it’s versatile, it’s delicious, and it doesn’t make you feel like you need a dictionary to order your supper.
Dietary Delusions: The “Free-From” Fad
And what about the constant “diet” fads that permeate the culinary world? Gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, carb-free, fun-free! Unless you have a genuine medical condition, why are we eliminating all the delicious things from our lives? People used to eat bread, cheese, and a bit of cake, and they were perfectly fine. Now, everyone’s got an “allergy” to happiness. It’s all just another way to make simple food complicated and less enjoyable, and usually more expensive. I saw a “gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, vegan, nut-free” muffin the other day. What was left? Air? Probably tasted like it too! It’s a testament to how utterly bewildered we’ve become about what constitutes actual nourishment.
The “Food Influencers”: A Nuisance and a Waste of Perfectly Good Ingredients
And don’t even get me started on these “food influencers” on social media. They film themselves slurping down strange concoctions or making “mukbang” videos where they just stuff their faces, making disgusting noises. It’s not appealing, it’s gluttonous! And what about the waste? All that perfectly good food being played with for “content” or thrown away after one bite for a “review.” It’s just disrespectful. There are starving children in the world, and these people are performing theatrics with their meals.
And their “recipes”! They take a perfectly good, simple dish, and then they complicate it with twenty unnecessary steps and ingredients you can’t find anywhere. “Oh, just use organic, hand-foraged Himalayan salt and saffron-infused unicorn horn dust for best results.” Just give me a recipe that uses ingredients I can buy at my local supermarket, and that doesn’t take three hours to prepare. My grandmother could whip up a feast in an hour, and it tasted like heaven, not like an experiment gone wrong in a laboratory. It’s all about looking fancy, not about tasting good. It’s a pure degradation of the culinary arts, turning cooking into a performative spectacle rather than a comforting act of creation.
A Plea for Plain Good Food: Let’s Reclaim the Table
So, here’s my earnest plea: bring back plain good food! Bring back hearty portions that fill you up without breaking the bank. Bring back simple ingredients that don’t require a Google search to understand. Bring back meals that taste like they were made with love, not like they were designed for an art gallery.
Give me a good old-fashioned meatloaf, some boiled potatoes, and a sensible slice of apple pie, made with real apples, not some “foam” or “gel.” Food that actually tastes like food, not like a culinary stunt. Food that nourishes the body and comforts the soul, not food that leaves you hungry, confused, and poorer. It’s a fundamental right, isn’t it? To have a decent meal!
It’s a testament to how far we’ve fallen that I even have to make this argument. Food is one of life’s simple pleasures, but they’ve managed to turn it into a pretentious, overpriced, and often inedible spectacle. Someone, please, speak to the manager of all these fancy restaurants and tell them to put some actual food on the plate! And while you’re at it, tell them to turn down the music and bring back comfortable chairs. It’s not too much to ask for, is it? Honestly! My stomach is rumbling just thinking about all this nonsense. I think I’ll go make myself a proper sandwich. With real bread.
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