The Main course 10-11
Irksome trends in today’s restaurants
In recent years, several local practices and national trends in restaurants have begun to irk me. Maybe it’s me, but I think at least some of you readers will agree.
What’s with all the Cheese?
It appears to be a growing national trend in all kinds of restaurants across the country, from fastfood chains to better dining establishments. This annoying trend has caused me to exclaim out loud more than once, “What’s with all the cheese on everything these days?!”
Just this summer when on vacation, I stopped at a Roy Roger’s in a highway rest stop for a quick burger. The several sizes and choices of paper-wrapped burgers were piled cafeteria-style for self-serve pickup, so I got in the fast-moving line.
To my dismay, only cheeseburgers were there. To get a burger without cheese, I had to special order it and wait while it was prepared.
This has happened numerous times in other chains and casual restaurants. Every time I ask for a hamburger, I am invariably asked if I “want cheese on it.” If I did, I would have specified, “cheeseburger!”
It is by no means just cheeseburgers. More often than not, when I order a steak sandwich, I am served a cheesesteak. Sandwich shops always expect you to want sliced American or Swiss or provolone. The order-taker gets nonplussed if you tell him that you don’t want any cheese.
Worse, many finer restaurants have menus with practically every entrée proudly featuring not one, but two or even three cheeses among the ingredients of one dish.
Not only is all this cheese not so good for our overall health, in most cases, the cheddar, manchego, Parmesan, gruyere, will overwhelm and dominate the flavors of the entrée. And when the dish has cooled, the once-melted cheese has congealed to a tar-like coating.
The food industry is egregiously pandering to our young teens, among whom cheese is undeniably a runaway favorite, and to even younger kids who will grow up with what I call the-cheese-on-everything habit, which will further escalate the over-use of cheese by America’s restaurants.
Enough with ‘Tower of Babel”
About 10 years ago, chefs trying to show their creativity, bored with the staid old way of placing a dish’s ingredients next to each other on the plate as nature intended, came up with the inane idea of stacking them one atop the other in what I call the Tower of Babel presentation style.
Yes, I thought it was different at first, but not necessarily that attractive, and besides, customers did not care to have to dismantle the tower before eating.
Nor did some of us like having pureed sweet potato clinging to our pan-seared scallops or vegetables. I did not need or want the flavor of the slice of polenta or the risotto imparted to my steak underneath.
Often the piles are topped with an oversized, ugly crown of frizzled onions or crisped, fried potato slivers all falling down over everything, most of which goes uneaten, and has to be brushed out of the way. Enough of this dumb idea already.
What happened to the Ice Cream Soda?
I grew up in the N.Y.C. area. One of my pleasures was the “ice cream soda” and the chocolate “egg cream,” which I could easily purchase in every street corner “candy store,” luncheonette and deli. My favorite was the black-and-white ice cream soda, made with chocolate syrup, seltzer and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
When I moved to the Philly area in the early 70s, at first I could find many places that served “ice cream sodas,” although the “egg cream” never caught on here.
But over the past 30-odd years, for some reason, ice cream sodas have virtually disappeared. Young servers never seem to have heard of it, and I have to give them instructions. Only the root beer float, whose popularity I don’t understand, seems to have survived.
What happened? Can someone tell me?
To contact Mitch Davis, you can e-mail him at: MdavisMainCourse@aol.com
It appears to be a growing national trend in all kinds of restaurants across the country, from fastfood chains to better dining establishments. This annoying trend has caused me to exclaim out loud more than once, “What’s with all the cheese on everything these days?!”
Just this summer when on vacation, I stopped at a Roy Roger’s in a highway rest stop for a quick burger. The several sizes and choices of paper-wrapped burgers were piled cafeteria-style for self-serve pickup, so I got in the fast-moving line.
To my dismay, only cheeseburgers were there. To get a burger without cheese, I had to special order it and wait while it was prepared.
This has happened numerous times in other chains and casual restaurants. Every time I ask for a hamburger, I am invariably asked if I “want cheese on it.” If I did, I would have specified, “cheeseburger!”
It is by no means just cheeseburgers. More often than not, when I order a steak sandwich, I am served a cheesesteak. Sandwich shops always expect you to want sliced American or Swiss or provolone. The order-taker gets nonplussed if you tell him that you don’t want any cheese.
Worse, many finer restaurants have menus with practically every entrée proudly featuring not one, but two or even three cheeses among the ingredients of one dish.
Not only is all this cheese not so good for our overall health, in most cases, the cheddar, manchego, Parmesan, gruyere, will overwhelm and dominate the flavors of the entrée. And when the dish has cooled, the once-melted cheese has congealed to a tar-like coating.
The food industry is egregiously pandering to our young teens, among whom cheese is undeniably a runaway favorite, and to even younger kids who will grow up with what I call the-cheese-on-everything habit, which will further escalate the over-use of cheese by America’s restaurants.
Enough with ‘Tower of Babel”
About 10 years ago, chefs trying to show their creativity, bored with the staid old way of placing a dish’s ingredients next to each other on the plate as nature intended, came up with the inane idea of stacking them one atop the other in what I call the Tower of Babel presentation style.
Yes, I thought it was different at first, but not necessarily that attractive, and besides, customers did not care to have to dismantle the tower before eating.
Nor did some of us like having pureed sweet potato clinging to our pan-seared scallops or vegetables. I did not need or want the flavor of the slice of polenta or the risotto imparted to my steak underneath.
Often the piles are topped with an oversized, ugly crown of frizzled onions or crisped, fried potato slivers all falling down over everything, most of which goes uneaten, and has to be brushed out of the way. Enough of this dumb idea already.
What happened to the Ice Cream Soda?
I grew up in the N.Y.C. area. One of my pleasures was the “ice cream soda” and the chocolate “egg cream,” which I could easily purchase in every street corner “candy store,” luncheonette and deli. My favorite was the black-and-white ice cream soda, made with chocolate syrup, seltzer and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
When I moved to the Philly area in the early 70s, at first I could find many places that served “ice cream sodas,” although the “egg cream” never caught on here.
But over the past 30-odd years, for some reason, ice cream sodas have virtually disappeared. Young servers never seem to have heard of it, and I have to give them instructions. Only the root beer float, whose popularity I don’t understand, seems to have survived.
What happened? Can someone tell me?
To contact Mitch Davis, you can e-mail him at: MdavisMainCourse@aol.com
