The end of any year is always a time for reflection, a chance to look back at the 12 months which have just passed and how they have changed us as people or a society.
The end of a decade brings with it even more opportunities for navel gazing, and although it usually takes us longer to digest a whole 10 years' worth of trends and events, it won't be too long before the character of the noughties really becomes clear.
Just to make sure we have covered all the bases, here is my selection of the 10 worst food trends of the last 10 years. It was a surprisingly hard task, not because I struggled to fill the coveted places with fashions and things which really ticked me off, but because I could easily have filled each spot 10 times over.
No room then for the neglect of our traditional snacks in favour of foreign interlopers in the form of bahn mi (never heard of them? You will have by this time next year) burritos and cupcakes. No slot for overpriced farmers' markets, micro greens, corporate food festivals, the inability of pubs to serve a full pint of beer and a very definite "no" from the editor to my suggestion that the whole article could consist entirely of pictures of Jamie Oliver. Instead, I have whittled it down to the 10 suggestions below.
10. Slates, smears, commas and skidmarks
Chefs should never ever forget that, in the end, all they are doing is making dinner. Most of us have very simple needs - I know I do. I want my meal served on a plate not a piece of rock which looks like it has been hacked off a menhir at Stonehenge, and I want a proper amount of sauce, not a small blob formed into a comma with the back of a spoon.
9. Small plate dining and international tapas
Constructing your own menu from small plates may seem like a fun idea at first, particularly if you are with friends and want to sample lots of dishes. The true horror only emerges once the bill arrives. It is always about 50% more than you expected and inflated by the aggressive up-selling of the waiting staff - "what, you only want 16 courses for the three of you? Really?" - oh, and when did it suddenly become OK to call anything served on a side plate 'tapas'?
8. Cheap cuts at cut-throat prices
Ten years ago my butcher used to throw a couple of lamb breasts into my weekly order because he "couldn't give them away". Now, supermarkets are selling them for the price I paid for my first car. The same is true of belly pork, ox cheeks and lamb shanks, marketed now as "forgotten cuts" for which we must pay through the snout. Who says nobody makes money out of a recession?
7. Underground pop-up restaurants
It seems that every restaurant now needs to come complete with a concept. Now they must 'pop-up' so we realise we only have a few weeks to experience the chef's brilliance or go 'underground' which as far as I can tell is like a dinner party you pay for. What ever happened to the days when the only concept a restaurant needed was to be any good?
6. MasterChef
MasterChef used to be a low rent Sunday afternoon diversion with the longest vowels on telly. Now, there are about eight different versions as every subsection of society tries to show an ever-expanding bald grocer and a glassy eyed Aussie that they have learned a lot from their "incredible journey." Its natural conclusion will obviously be "Serial Killer Cannibal MasterChef" where Gregg can tell someone their mother needed another five minutes in the pan.
5. Molecular gastronomy
Cooking is a broad church and even if I don't consider espuma as a course, I can see why so many people become excited about the skills of Ferran and Heston. A foam gun costs as little as £20, which means that any halfwit with access to the internet can declare themselves a practitioner of the fine art of molecular gastronomy. The words of an old college lecturer come back to me; "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." Most of them shouldn't.
4. Gastropubs
There is nothing wrong with pubs serving food or with pubs becoming restaurants to stave off closure. It is that grey area in the middle when they can't decide what they hell they are that is the problem. Not comfortable enough to linger over a meal, but too full of diners to find anywhere to sit with a pint. End result - confusion and a scotch egg costing a fiver.
3. Seasonal and local
It used to be all about 'organic' but now 'seasonal' and 'local' have become the marketing buzzwords de jour. Harking back to a golden age of British food which never really existed they are paraded with such regularity to have become meaningless. The last person to berate me for buying unseasonal produce was drinking a cup of tea. 'Nuff said.
2. Bloggers
I know, I know, I am one of them. I have asked to be moved in a restaurant because, and I quote "I need better lighting" and told my fiancée that her cooking was "great but not bloggable". But even I admit that it is all getting out of control. Where once there were only a handful of us, now we are legion and the noise from the blogosphere is becoming deafening. Perhaps it is time we all put our cameras down and started enjoying our food again?
1. Chef as brand extension
Is there anything chefs won't agree to put their names on in the name of profit? Pots, books, gadgets, 'jellified' stocks and sauces, the list is endless. No one begrudges anyone the right to make a dollar, but please don't insult our intelligence by telling us that brand extension does not come at the expense of the quality of food from your kitchen. I have spent hundreds of pounds proving you wrong. If I had to sum up the noughties in just two words it would be 'flavour shaker'.
Some of the trends above were bad ideas to begin with and just plain wrong. The others are more evidence that we in Britain are able take a perfectly acceptable concept and ruin it by assigning its control to the media and those with less imagination and ability than the originators.
So do you agree or am I being horribly unfair? What are your least favourite trends of the last decade?
