I agree about pork belly. I am so sick of hearing pork belly this and that. What the hell is pork belly and what is so good about it.

Pork belly is certainly becoming a cliche, but it really is pretty damned good. It's exactly what it sounds like: meat from the belly part of a pig. That's the cut most American bacon is made from. Regular pork belly is just the uncured, unsmoked version of this. However, if you don't like fatty cuts, this isn't one for you.

I hate fat and the pork belly I had had mushy fat. I ended up picking out the meat so I could leave the fat. I would rather flavor things with crisp bacon.

Yeah, if you don't like fat, pork belly is definitely not going to be appetizing. (And that's fine. I tend to like fat a lot, so pork belly is up my alley. One of my favorite Eastern European bar snacks is bread smeared in lard with a bit of salt and onion. Goose or chicken liver, too, if you're feeling particularly decadent.)

toria wrote:I hate fat and the pork belly I had had mushy fat. I ended up picking out the meat so I could leave the fat. I would rather flavor things with crisp bacon.

Now that pork belly is so trendy, I've had some really awful terribly soggy stuff. I myself first had it at Momofuku in NYC, which was one of the epicenters of the trend as far as I know in the form of the pork belly buns. There it is braised, then seared until crispy. The thing about bacon is that the smoked flavor can be overwhelming. With good pork belly from well-raised pigs, you get a much more complex porky flavor, which is a BAD thing if the pork is no good. The texture of the Momofuku bun pork belly is pretty similar to bacon. I also don't like pork belly served as a giant block, I find the fat overwhelming, I like it sliced and used as an accent. The fat from cooking can be reserved for other recipes.

mgmcewen wrote:The thing about bacon is that the smoked flavor can be overwhelming.

It's like you read my original post before I edited it for brevity. I agree. Bacon can easily overwhelm flavors. I'm one of those freaks who doesn't like bacon on their hamburger, as it just tends to taste like bacon, instead of the beef I'm craving when I want a hamburger.

Pie-love wrote:Bacon everything.

As bacon-everything edges closer to the cliche cliff, cablenet Destination America is debuting 12 episodes of a show entitled "United States of Bacon," starting with Wisconsin and Chicago on 12/30/12 at 9 pm CT.
Episode 1: Todd Fisher goes to Milwaukee and Kenosha.
AJ Bombers: Chunky peanut butter/bacon/cheeseburger
Saloon on Calhoun: Bacon-wrapped pork "wings"
Frank's Diner: Garbage platter
Comet Cafe: Bacon-wrapped meatloaf sandwich AND bacon cheddar apple pie
Episode 2 (shown back to back): Next stop Chicago.
Gino's: Deep-dish pizza with bacon
Green Door Tavern: Triple-decker BLT
Morrie O'Malley's: BLTurtle burger (reportedly 2 hamburger patties, 3 hot dogs, and 10 strips of bacon).

United States of Bacon is showing up on my DVR guide as "US of Bacon", the show may have an entire episode in Des Moines. Kinda makes sense that the episodes are half an hour, the special this summer was a full hour. I like the anti-snob food travel shows where the fat guy walks around eating unhealthy stuff with lame on-liners, but this show sounds like a tweet from three years ago. Even Kum & Go has the maple glazed bacon doughnut these days.

Umlauts on menu items.

Related: if you are going to use them, train your servers on how to pronounce them, or how to expect to hear them pronounced according to your apparent wishes. This is especially frustrating when it's the craft cocktail menu läden with umlauts against a high background decibel level.

Bacön?

Santander wrote:Umlauts on menu items.

Are these "heavy metal" umlauts, or real umlauts? And where do you see them? I've never noticed them anywhere.

Santander wrote:
Umlauts on menu items.

Are these "heavy metal" umlauts, or real umlauts? And where do you see them? I've never noticed them anywhere.

Ne, neither. Seems like a bit of a reach as a legit complaint.

Evil Ronnie wrote:Sun dried tomatoes (they've been on my list for 30 years)

Lard, Lard, I've hated those since they took over the menu of every Berkeley cafe I hung out at as a grunge teen. So it's been a while. They need to GO.

My favorite Food Cliche of 2012 is/are "things that annoy/irk/disgust David Hammond".

I kid, of course, the "Finger-licker" thread was from a different year.

dk wrote:My favorite Food Cliche of 2012 is/are "things that annoy/irk/disgust David Hammond".

Sheesh, that is so 2004!

Did anyone mention ampersands in restaurant names as an emerging cliche? I guess it's better than the contraction 'n', which should only be allowed for Franks 'n' Dawgs.

Jen

The "animal scat" fine dining plating style that evokes the forest floor - berries of food over one smear with random grass or twigs of vegetation thrown on. This seemed omnipresent to me in 2012.

It seemed to succeed the "stack everything in a cylinder like rice cakes" style of 2006-2009.

Pie-love wrote:Did anyone mention ampersands in restaurant names as an emerging cliche? I guess it's better than the contraction 'n', which should only be allowed for Franks 'n' Dawgs.

Worse than the contraction 'n' is when one or both of the apostrophes is missing. This place on Webster and Racine called Jam n' Honey doesn't realize there's supposed to be an apostrophe on both sides of the n. And how about when one or both of the apostrophes surrounding the n is curling in the direction opposite the way it should?

Restaurant owners should have to go through background checks before they're allowed to use contractions.

We need one of these guys.
http://thegrammarvandal.wordpress.com/c ... eet-signs/

Pie-love wrote:Did anyone mention ampersands in restaurant names as an emerging cliche? I guess it's better than the contraction 'n', which should only be allowed for Franks 'n' Dawgs.

Jen

I support this...pretty much obligatory for any Logan/Wicker opening.

Pie Lady wrote:We need one of these guys.
http://thegrammarvandal.wordpress.com/c ... eet-signs/

I agree, Pie Lady. There should be registered grammarians who have English as a first language (I would volunteer) who are legally authorized to roam the streets with both spray paint and solvent in order to add apostrophes where they are needed and remove them where they are not.

And quotation marks!

Love it Pielady! More grammar vandals!

Also, in a different thread, tip of the hat to d4v3 for this comment:

d4v3 wrote:I'm thinking of opening a place called Ampersand & Ampersand. It will be right next door to Consonant Vowel Consonant Vowel. I kid...

Cheers, Jen

Great! d4v3's place could have a sign reading:

&&&


[Actually, linguists and logicians would probably insist that it read "&" & "&" but that's awfully pedantic, don't you think?]


Geo

Makes me think of this article that I just read in The Onion.

toria wrote:I agree about pork belly. I am so sick of hearing pork belly this and that. What the hell is pork belly and what is so good about it.

Blasphemer!!!

Local.

Organic.

Sustainable.


Local actually means something - made within x amount of miles of where you are eating it. If this is a good or bad thing is highly debatable. For example, local coffee in Chicago probably is a bad thing. Organic is wholly arbitrary and in no way indicates if the food is healthy or tastes good.

Finally we come to sustainable. It is a meaningless term. Thus, whoever is pushing "sustainablity' gets to boss around those with whom they disagree.

AngrySarah wrote:Local actually means something - made within x amount of miles of where you are eating it. If this is a good or bad thing is highly debatable. For example, local coffee in Chicago probably is a bad thing.

I presume you are referring to locally grown coffee. But locally roasted is very much a good thing.

AngrySarah wrote:Organic is wholly arbitrary and in no way indicates if the food is healthy or tastes good.

Organic labeling is not arbitrary. See http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usd ... RTIFICATIO

AngrySarah wrote:Finally we come to sustainable. It is a meaningless term.

I used to think so too, when it first invaded my field of study a few years ago. Suddenly everything had to be sustainable, and a whole field of professionals to whom it was a new idea understood it and liked it about as much as they understood and liked "post-modernism." Myself, I've gradually come around to understanding and appreciating the concept of sustainability--in my field and in the food industry.

Post-modernism, not so much.

Well-played Katie! But I'll see your postmodernism generator, and raise you a Sokal affair.

It certainly seems that "sustainable* has become a cliché word, yet, as you note, we've most certainly come to operationally define some aspects of sustainability, particulary with respect to fisheries. So sustainability is somewhat paradoxical in that it is both clichéd in use (especially, say, on menus), but significant in practice. Interesting.

Geo

P.S. I actually knew Derrida, but that was long before he became D E R R I D A, the famous post-modernist. In fact, one Sunday morning, he bought me a beer in the café-bar of the Jardin du Luxembourg, across the street from his office. It was fun, and easy talking to him...then.