figjustin wrote:If you need bacon, as a chef to make people eat your food than you are using it to much. I have seen menus that use bacon in everything from a bacon wrapped scallop, bacon mac and cheese, bacon stuffed crab cake and bacon sauteed greens just for the apps. This is boring, unimaginative and easy. You could easily remove bacon from three of those apps and have a more balanced profile of flavors in your portfolio.
LAZ wrote:...due to the clamor of some segments of the public for restaurants to list every single item in every dish...
riddlemay wrote:LAZ, I hardly think your link--which is to the food allergy thread--is an appropriate example. There is a pejorative tone to your sentence, as if the "clamoring" of "some segments of the public" were a silly trend. If I didn't follow your link, I never would guess that you were actually referring to a thread that was about the listing (or not listing) of potentially deadly ingredients. I thought we had laid that conversation to rest--or at least fully agreed to disagree, if not respect the other side, on that issue.
nicinchic wrote:Our waiter this weekend at MSM even asked us how we heard about them.
Without getting too far into it, I think you have to list the "trigger" ingredients as I'll call them. Things that if they appear in a dish would cause a decent sized group to not order them, AND they aren't obvious. Nuts and pork products are what come to mind promptly.LAZ wrote:figjustin wrote:If you need bacon, as a chef to make people eat your food than you are using it to much. I have seen menus that use bacon in everything from a bacon wrapped scallop, bacon mac and cheese, bacon stuffed crab cake and bacon sauteed greens just for the apps. This is boring, unimaginative and easy. You could easily remove bacon from three of those apps and have a more balanced profile of flavors in your portfolio.
Do you have the same opinion about sauteed onions and garlic? Extra-virgin olive oil? Lemon? Bacon often plays a similar supporting role.
I think it always has. Part of the reason it's become a "trend" is that where once it did so quietly, now restaurants feel obliged to trumpet it every time it appears, due to the clamor of some segments of the public for restaurants to list every single item in every dish. Years ago, those bacon sauteed greens would just have been called "greens" and bacon-wrapped tournedos would just have been labeled "filet mignon."
I agree that if a menu has too many dishes where bacon plays an extraordinary starring role -- a bacon martini, pork belly entree and bacon ice cream -- the chef might be taking the piggy thing too far, but using bacon in multiple dishes as a fat or seasoning seems no more of a crutch than frequent use of sofrito.
jpschust wrote:Without getting too far into it, I think you have to list the "trigger" ingredients as I'll call them. Things that if they appear in a dish would cause a decent sized group to not order them, AND they aren't obvious. Nuts and pork products are what come to mind promptly.
jpschust wrote:I think I'm sick of chefs using bacon in every dish to impart a smokey salty flavor. Get a little more creative, especially if you're just using ho-hum varieties of bacon.
figjustin wrote:LAZ, what is your least favorite food or food item to eat?
LAZ wrote: ... my general philosophy about food is that if I don't like something, it's probably because I haven't come across a good preparation.
Mhays wrote:Black Napkins?
figjustin wrote:I could cook brussels sprouts with bacon and they would taste much better to you. This can be said for allmost all things and bacon.
That argument could just as much apply to, say, onions, or garlic.
figjustin wrote:And if someone decided to make all of there menu items with so much garlic, onions, celery, beets, whatever that you could make a point of saying all of there dishes tasted of thoes items and they made a effort to point that out that you would be 100% correct. I just don't see that happening anywere with anything but bacon.
MariaTheresa wrote:I remember an issue of Gourmet magazine that featured menus for each decade -- taken from their own recipes from that decade. Viewed in that way, the trendiness of certain foods became more apparent. Now that doesn't mean that fondue isn't good or that nothing should be glazed with balsamic vinegar (or wrapped in bacon); a trend isn't necessarily a bad thing.
But ingredients and preparations are like words; when a particularly useful or fresh or intriguing one comes along, it gets used, then it gets overused (think of "nano-"whatever right now, or "green technology" and so on). Eventually, people get sick of it, and its use starts to shrink back down to a more reasonable size.