Top Ten Worst Food Trends of the Decade

This list seems a bit premature, since that the first decade of the twenty-first century doesn't end until 31 December 2010 (the numbering system for years starts at one, not zero, folks!).
-Paul W.

Oh, c'mon Paul. This is how popular culture defines a decade (or century, or millenium). I celebrated the new millenium like most everyone else - on Jan 1, 2000, even though I am a physicist and know perfectly well how to count forward and backwards.

You don't have to apply rigid math to what is essentially a psychological categorization of years and numbers. And it is not even literally incorrect to do what popular culture finds natural. The first decade of ordinal numbers starts at 0 and ends at 9. "0" is the first number! The next decade starts when we begin the 10s place, at 10, not 11. The first century begins at 100, not 101, when the 1 shifts to the 100s place. This is how our psychological connection to the decimal system works. We are trained that way and appreciate things that way. So we can designate that the first decade of the 0th millenium began in 1 BC, if we really need a place to zero our timeline. It does not matter what people back then called their years because none of that was standardized then. By defining our decades/centuries/millenia this way, the problem of when negative decades began and ended is levied on dead people who never even knew they lived in negative times.

The real problem is that religous historians tended to define years relative to the presumed (yet imprecisely known) year of Jesus' birth. So they follow year -1 by year 1. That system is not sensible from a numerical point of view. A system that tries to force our natural concept of decades and centuries to abide by that zero-point error is irrational. People do not deserve to be criticized or corrected for thinking rationally and naturally about when decades and centuries begin and end. So frankly, we can take what works now and fix the problem from 2010 years ago by stipulation.

There is one trend that I find abominable - breakfast bars. I don't know whether this really took off in the 90s or 00s, but if you want a candy bar for breakfast while commuting to work, just call it a candy bar.

You got that right. I have looked at those things for years, both in the breakfast section and the heath food section...read the labels, they are scary. I know a couple who travel over mountain passes several times a year and carry a bunch of those in their car. They have the right idea though...their shelf live is amazing, high in calories, and you could sustain yourself until the tire chain guy showed up.

Not to jump into a debate or anything but I also never imagine (or have ever imagined before) that decades don't begin with the 10, 20, 30, 40 etc etc etc. It just seems plainly logical to me. I'm not saying it's "technically" correct or that I'm a math historian or anything but to me it seems that the FIRST digit takes logical preference, at least when counting years (or rather that would be the third digit that is the key in a 4 digit year designation). The reason for this is that I can't see how anything STARTING with, say, a 7 doesn't logically make it a "seventies year". I mean if we agree that a 7 is a 7, then how does something turning into '70 from '69 not start with a seven? And what else could logically "define" a seventies year if not all years that simply begin with a 7 and not with a 6 (or any other number for that matter)?

Just thinking in terms of how we view or historically remember years, I can't envision that when, say, 1989 ended and we now introduced a new digit (9) that there's anyway we could've considered 1990 part of the 80's still. How could a number like 1990 represent anything about the 80's when by its very four digits, no eights are even in it? And things historically will always be grouped into happening in the "seventies" if they occured in 1970 or in the twenties if they happened in 1920. Again, I'm not arguing that it's technically right or wrong. I know we dont count on our hands starting with zeros but even there, I might say that I view the number 10 as really the FIRST number of a whole new group of ten (decade) and not as part of the first group of ten. Maybe I'm just crazy but with years it just seems obvious and numerically logical that a 1990 can't have anything to do with an "eight" or that a 2010 can't have anything to do with a "single digit". They would be NEW start points, not final points of the previous ten. Or am I just going crazy here?

Jeff

I'm with Maria. Foam needs to be on that list, along with gelée.

rwj

Bernard and Jeff,

It's the difference between cardinal and ordinal numbers. Cardinal numbers are the integers: 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. Ordinal numbers indicate position in a linear ordering: first, second, third, etc. There is no such thing as a 0-th position. The Christian calendar (or common era calendar as it's now called to maintain religious neutrality) is ordinally numbered--it starts with the first year of our Lord (anno Domini), 1 AD, and proceeds from there. The year before 1 AD is the first year before Christ--1 BC, and years proceed backwards from there. There is no year zero in the calendar. The first century AD is thus the years 1 AD to 100 AD. The twentieth century AD was the years 1901 through 2000. Our current century, the 21st, started with the year 2001 (the first year of the third millennium AD), and its first decade ends with this year, 2010. It's too bad the folks who set this system up in late Roman times did so before the concept of zero as a number had been invented, but there it is.

My mistake was to assume that the term "the decade" in the title of this thread referred to the reckoning as described above. Instead it seems it was referring to the noughties (I really like that term)--the years 2000-2009, just as the 60s was 1960-69, etc. That's OK. After all, intervals of this sort are completely arbitrary--there's nothing special about base 10 except it matches the number of fingers most of us have.

Going back to the topic, I agree that foam should have been on the list.

-Paul W.

God forbid nothing trendy ever happened and everything stayed the same--we'd all be bored out of our minds. Small plates? I happen to be someone who often ordered three appetizers instead of the usual one plus a main course, I prefer the variety. Truffle oil? Love it--oh sure, every restaurant under the sun was using it for awhile, but as a pantry staple it's here to stay. Sliders? It's about time!

Harrumph.

Jenise, I agree wholeheartedly. Many of these items were good, but the problem as the author insinuates,(or I interpret) is that they are victims of overkill. I like garlic mashed, truffle oil, and the occasional slider (though rarely the greasy hamburger kind) but not with every entree. Perhaps the test of time will be that the item of choice may be acquired even if it is an "off the menu" request. What do you think? I don't know..what makes a classic a "classic"? And which "classic" becomes a household staple? Perhaps that is the true test.
JB

PS. Foam has no saving grace.

I'm with Bernard on this one. I think the author was just out to debase anything he could identify as a trend. This sort of thing seems to be getting more common on blogs and such. Of course, that doesn't mean I don't agree with him on some of those items (the martini one in particular).

If one completely avoids the really popular, good trends just because they've become too widespread, one runs the risk of Yogi Berra syndrome ("nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded"). Or baby out with the bathwater, as Jenise put it.

But when you go to a place that advertises itself as a "martini bar", and you can't get a real, honest gin martini--only the fru-fru ones based on vodka--something's wrong with the picture.

-Paul W.

Not to beat a dead horse, Paul, but it is not with malice that I ignored cardinal numbers and focused on ordinal. This is because the significance of 2000 being the start of a new millennium is that the principal digit in the thousands' place changed. This is, as I argued earlier, a reflection of our psychological training to recognize the major changes in decimal numbers, which start with 0. We signify the important event of adding a new place at the beginning of the number whenever we end a sequence of all 9s. So 999 is the one thousandth ordinal number and we make a special attribution when we have to add the 4th digit - jumping to 1000.

On the other hand, going from 998 to 999 no more special than going from 1000 to 1001.

The problem with food trends is that bad or incompetent chefs and corporations feel compelled to follow them without having the training in technique or access to the proper ingredients. So we end up with vulgarized products that are no reflection on the innovator, but mislead people to believe that the fads are vacuous.

Point taken, Bernard. But we are a little bit two-minded about the matter--we do call this the 21st Century even though the century digits are 20. So we seem to number centuries starting with 1, even though we number decades and years within a decade starting with 0.

I'd like to start a new variant of this topic:

Which of the bad food trends of the 90s were dropped (at least for the most part) in the noughties?

One that I can think of: adding a little cayenne and garlic powder to your dish and calling it Cajun. I don't see this as much as I used to.

-Paul W.

Which of the bad food trends of the 90s were dropped (at least for the most part) in the noughties?

Stuff sprinkled on the rim of the plate, very glad to see that go, I always had the urge to grab a service cloth and clean the plate. Also glad to see a decrease in the height of "tall" food. I made a waiter giggle once when I looked at the plate she put in front of me and said "tall food AND sprinkles"
Love innovation in food but some things are just wrong.

Barb, your post reminded me of a meal I had with two other people during the 90s at a restaurant in Adelaide's Hutt Street. I don't remember the dishes we ordered, but when they came out, one was on a small plate not much larger than your average bread-and-butter plate; one was on an enormous plate the size of a cart wheel; and the third was on a standard sized dinner plate. I became helpless with laughter. I couldn't stop thinking of the Three Bears: one was too big, one was too small, and the other was just right!

hahaha! that post made me laugh. i agree.... foam should be in there somewhere

and deconstructionism. now i'm a lit major and i understand deconstructing a text... but deconstructing food for me is less about food than it is about showing off (note my top chef post on michael v). give me a good hearty meal anyday over something intelligent. food is meant to be eaten, not analyzed.

Matilda, my thought would have been, "you'd think at the prices they charge here that they could afford matched china".

-Paul W.

food is meant to be eaten, not analyzed.

Don't you think that is going a bit too far? If no thought is required then why even worry about food culture. Surely human civilization has gained lots from people thinking about food.

Which of the bad food trends of the 90s were dropped (at least for the most part) in the noughties?

Thankfully, the incidence of Garlic Mashed Potatoes is in decline. You still see it at retro places and formula restaurants that have not changed their menu in 10 years.

I'm also seeing ahi tartare less frequently, a good thing since so many imitators used second rate fish and don't have the restraint to make the dish sing. Usually, it has been overwrought with too much dressing and too many ingredients.

Oh, and BTW, Paul. The counting of centuries is indeed cardinal. But our calendars and temporal referencing use the year, not the century. Centuries (and millennia) tend to be referenced by historians and journalists (and corporate names), but it always causes the average person to think twice. I mean, who thinks of Columbus' journeys to the Americas as a 15th century event? Nobody. It took place in the 1490s. Who thinks of the 11th century appearance of the comet known as Haley's? Nobody. It occurred in 1066, during the crusades.

When confronted with a choice of cardinality or ordinality in thinking about time, people prefer the latter. Naturally.

Nice job, JB. Why not just start a fight about PC vs Mac?

thinking about food is different, in my opinion from analyzing it - the sort of analysis that leads to deconstruction.

thinking about how to improve a dish, and that sort of thing i feel is in the natural course of food culture. but i find it distracting from the culture of food to think about "hey, how do i take a caesar's salad apart so it tastes like one but doesn't look like one?"

this reminds me - again to go back to literature - of writers who against the norm simply because postmodern culture has allowed them to do so, whether or not this was the genre that was most proper for them to express their views of the world.

basically what i'm saying is that thinking and analyzing for its own sake shouldn't be the purpose of food

food is meant to be eaten, not analyzed.

Don't you think that is going a bit too far? If no thought is required then why even worry about food culture. Surely human civilization has gained lots from people thinking about food.

Which of the bad food trends of the 90s were dropped (at least for the most part) in the noughties?

Stuff sprinkled on the rim of the plate, very glad to see that go, I always had the urge to grab a service cloth and clean the plate. Also glad to see a decrease in the height of "tall" food. I made a waiter giggle once when I looked at the plate she put in front of me and said "tall food AND sprinkles"
Love innovation in food but some things are just wrong.

That's funny Barb! Back when this was all the rage in the US in the 90s, I was severely reprimanded by the instructor of a day course at Cordon Bleu in Paris for drizzling some sauce on the rim of my "presentation" plate right before serving. Looking back, it was actually kind of funny. Spittle was flying from his mouth as he yelled at me in French while the American translator was trying to "soften" his critique ala, "Uhm, what the Chef is saying is, it's not, uhm, appropriate to, uhm drizzle..............." At the time, I wanted to crawl right into the oven.

Spittle was flying from his mouth as he yelled at me in French while the American translator was trying to "soften" his critique ala, "Uhm, what the Chef is saying is, it's not, uhm, appropriate to, uhm drizzle..............."

Too funny! But I'm sure you did not think it was funny at the time.

Spittle was flying from his mouth as he yelled at me in French while the American translator was trying to "soften" his critique ala, "Uhm, what the Chef is saying is, it's not, uhm, appropriate to, uhm drizzle..............."

Too funny! But I'm sure you did not think it was funny at the time.

No, especially since I was about two weeks into a four 1/2 week SOLO trip through Europe. I was seriously homesick. When I walked out of the Cordon Bleu that day, it was pouring rain and I didn't have an umbrella. I felt like a total cliche'. ha.

thinking about food is different, in my opinion from analyzing it...basically what i'm saying is that thinking and analyzing for its own sake shouldn't be the purpose of food

But what is the difference between thinking and analyzing?

I don't think any of these chefs felt that their deconstruction was for the sole purpose of analyzing, I am sure they all thought they were adding pleasure to the dining experience. Perhaps not for you, but for other diners.

I agree that sometimes chefs can go too far and lose the pleasure in all their analysis but I think it's a problem of degree and not of the concept. Deconstructing dishes has gone so mainstream that there are many mediocre chefs praticing the concept. But as a concept, I don't see anything wrong with bringing new ideas and new textures to the dining experience. And that is what deconstruction does at its best. To use my earlier example, if you love the flavors in a BLT you can pretty easily make one at home. But surely there is plenty of pleasure to be had in experiencing those flavors in an unexpected and interesting way?

I say this as someone who is far from the most techno-minded cook but as someone who appreciates letting chefs experiment and discover new things. And as always, remember that 99.9999% of everything is garbage so don't judge the concept by the bad execution!

Rahsaan,

If you ever get to Chicago be sure to check out Moto. I'll bet it would be right up your alley.