Tasty egg yolk has to be slimy runny ?

https://brenherrera.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Garlic-Hummus-and-steak-sandwich-Bren-Herrera-final.jpg'

dcarch

Bacon with everything

The need for the newest thing rather than something familiar but excellent

The need to have a menu explained to the diner

Thanks! That was very cute, and most were on point. I feel bad for the guy who can't taste avocado, however. Good avocados really are delicious, not metallic, and yes, there is something wrong with his mouth. But I could agree that avocado toast is pretty done, other than the fact that it's better for you than butter.

Can I add a brand new peeve?

"Plant". As if all plants are good.

Tide from plants. Like that couldn't mean they're abrading your clothes with almond meal or poisoning your sewage system with arsenic or cyanide from plants. I mean, probably not because I'm sure they're trying to make a good product. It's the "from plants" that's totally inane.

Then along comes...

"Plant Butter". New ad from Country Crock, in olive, almond and one other flavor. Maybe avocado. But they're margarine! With the standard industrial food oils and chemicals that cheap margarine has. On the plus side, the sticks have the correct amount of fat to be okay for baking, but it's such a sham!

Ugh, and I was going to try making a cauliflower pizza crust for dinner tomorrow.

I enjoyed that, Thanks. I found myself agreeing with most of it, but not the avocado. I cannot imagine life without guacamole.

I agree on the cauliflower, disagree on the avocado, but as I've often said, taste is not objective, it's subjective. I remember Jessica telling me not to eat the uni, that it tastes like "low tide". (grin) I do happen to agree, but others love it.

I would add the current trend of "super spicy" for everything. Elery loves hot and spicy foods, but he adds peppers or hot sauce to his food while I keep mine edible. But can anyone really tell me with a straight face that they actually enjoy eating a Ghost Pepper or Carolina Reaper? It's gotten too extreme.

Annie

Agreed on the peppers. I remember when people suffered from habaneros. The difference is that there's a beautiful flavor to habaneros, and you just use a teeny tiny bit. You get the flavor along with the heat. Even in tiny bits, ghost peppers have no flavor, just heat. Pointless. Maybe good for five pack smokers who can't taste anything else.

My other peeve? "We have minimal food waste." That sounds good, right? But all it really means is that they put the stems from lettuce, onions, etc., into your food. It's disgusting. I'm not talking about cleaning them well and putting them in the stock pot. Just tossing them into the food, crusty cut point and all. EEEEEEWWWWWW.

I love cauliflower.....whole florettes, lightly steamed and served with Hollandaise...but not as rice nor as Faux Tatoes nor a pizza crust....nope!
And I want my marinara sauce on pasta not on zucchini spirals, nor spaghetti squash.
And I love avocados and you can put them on everything for me. But I am sick to death of a hamburger so piled with everything that you can't get your mouth around them and I don't like to watch others eat them....a burger with half pound of meat lettuce, bacon, 2 kinds of cheese, a slab of onion, tomato, sauteed mushrooms and a fried egg..nope!!
Oh and warm goat cheese....why warm? Goat cheese is fine but I don't want warm goat cheese on my salad!
And while we are on the subject of overdone....how about martinis? A martini is a cocktail made from gin or vodka with a splash of dry vermouth....now we have appletinis, caramel tinis....and all sorts of martinis with various fruit juices and with chocolate syrup drizzled into the glass and the rim of the glass dipped into candy sprinkles....nope those are dessert not a martini!

I love a good vodka martini AND avocados. You can keep the cauliflower-everything but the steamed. (I'm with you on that one, Linda.) And, I totally agree on the piled-high, multilevel hamburger. Actually, any piled-high and multileveled tower of food is silly. Seafood that is really made of fish... even tho' it's suppose to be crab or shrimp, is a big problem for me. If you say something is meat, crab, shrimp, whatever, that's what it should be and not some fake.

I thought most of the ideas were spot on, and I totally agree with the comment about tall tables with stools. I hate them. I don't like struggling up onto a stool and not being able to move. I don't understand the need for them- it's not like they take up any less room than a normal table and chairs.

I looked at the list and I'm afraid a lot of it I've never even heard of, that's how backward I am. But the high tables are definitely one of them, I refuse to eat at one. Another thing I despise is square plates - I don't know why but I get angry whenever I'm given one. Other than that I am weary of the word "umami" since there isn't really a good clear explanation of what that means. And finally the word "sustainable" - totally sick of it.

Only place I see high tables is in bar areas or other mingling type settings, where they make perfect sense.

Several local restaurants have a couple of high-tops in the dining rooms. One local brew pub chain has only hightops in the (very large) bar area, where they serve a lot of diners, tho not in the dining area.

Being short, I simple refuse those tables. And I also have a thing about the booths in many restaurants, where the seats are too low/table too high. I feel like my chin's on the table. Again, I just refuse the seating or ask to be moved to a regular table.

I agree with the burgers piled too high. Also am turned off by repetitive, unoriginal menus. Restaurants are over-doing dishes like pulled pork, flatbreads, fish tacos and the same old salads, but making them sound like they're unique to that restaurant. They're not. We have a new restaurant opening that's claiming "craft meat" on their menu. What the heck is "craft meat"?

Oh, and "infused." That word still makes me angry.

But I do like the new "shareables" trend. I like sharing food and feeling communal with food.

I'm height-challenged, too. A counter height stool is okay, but bar height is impossible for me. Ditto on the booths with seats so low that I need a booster seat to reach the table! And...while I'm complaining, I'm tired of restaurants that are so noisy that I cannot hear my dining companions speak. It's no wonder everyone is looking at their phones. They have to text one another to have a conversation! Lastly, I detest mashed potatoes and I'm so tired of them being served with everything. Grilled salmon atop mashed potatoes...no thank you.

On the other hand, I like spiralized vegetables, especially if they are cooked al dente. I don't mind a slice or two of avocado if it is an appropriate flavor with a dish nor do I mind a little spiciness with certain dishes. In fact, I prefer spiciness to overwhelming saltiness. Every time I see a television chef dump a handful of salt in a dish, I cringe. Salt may bring out the flavor, but I prefer the muted flavor without the salt, thank you.

Adding a poached or coddled egg to the top of an otherwise delicious looking menu item - I mean dinner dishes, not breakfast/brunch. I like eggs, but I don't want all my food topped off with one.

I think the trend has lessened, but I really hate smears of stuff on my plate. Like who ever thought a smear of chocolate or anything else brown looked appetizing? Same with foam. Ugh, it looks disgusting!

That foam looks like soap suds. Yuck. Whatever is it?

I totally agree about the egg (but I don't like eggs at all). Just seeing it there plopped down and staring at me is gross (shakshuka).

LOL!! Jerzeegirl, I get you. I have a friend IRL who hates eggs too. But if it's plonked down on top it's not shakshuka. They need to be poached in the sauce of that.

Something that also struck me was the condiment thing. I've heard cooks complain about having to make the house made ketchup specifically because they think Heinz is so much better, but the classier the restaurant the more they feel like everything needs to be made in house. I prefer the "better" places that use proper bought ketchup (if you're serving ketchup type food like french fries there's no reason for la-di-dah-ery) and just put it in those individual stainless cups rather than plonking the bottle on the table diner style.

As I have said to all of the places I've visited in the last 25 years - TURN OFF THE MUSIC, or at least turn it DOWN -- when the server asks what I'd like to order I pretty much whisper so they have to lean in -- then I tell them I'd like a side of quiet - or quieter. They usually complied.

When I was working (telephone lady) for two large companies with a large staff in busy customer service I programmed the answering menu to give the caller a choice of music on hold or silence -- they opted for silence 90% of the time (the other 10% were first time callers). They could put their phone on speaker and then respond when they heard a person greeting them.

And, high top tables and chairs -- I am quite tall -- but aging. I really don't want to break a hip getting off a tall chair and for younger women there is no elegant way to get off one.

My biggest problem with current food choices is the over salting of everything. Ever have salt on oatmeal? or fresh fruit? or tuna that tasted like it was still at sea? That stuff gets sent back to the cook with comments and I try to bend the ear of the manager. I guess I am just cranky in my old age <<sigh>>.

I think I must have read a different article, as I did not see most of what has been discussed here.

What I did not see in the article was a criticism of food piled high, and I have always hated that. I do not want my food stacked into a skyscraper that I have to deconstruct before eating.

I love avocados, and I also like cauliflower. I don't like poached egg on anything, as I do not like poached egg period.

I also do not like food that is oversalted, and I have noticed this trend more on the East Coast than on the West Coast.

Bar tables are okay for a bar but not for a restaurant. However, in my house in Cathedral City, we have a bar table and bar stools, and I have not yet replaced them as they seem to function okay. Bar stool seat heights can vary from 26" to 30", and mine are fairly low. I've never drawn a bar stool with a seat higher than 30", but perhaps some exist, although I think they would be awkward.

Lars, we've been adding our own peeves to what was said in the article. The article was fun, but most of us agree with most of their peeves so found other things to add to the discussion.

Will never tire of avocado no matter how it's served. Love cauliflower when it's not pretending to be something else.

I'm 66 and still enjoy sitting at bar tables. Have a raised bar peninsula in the kitchen where we eat most meals. It's also where I use my laptop.

Love poached eggs and am willing to try them in different ways.

I cook with serranos a lot, but that's as spicy as I go. Not a fan of hot sauces, except for sriracha.

Also like my hamburgers manageable. A slice of homegrown tomato and lettuce is all I need.

Lars, there are two heights of 'bar'. One for a 36" high standard countertop, aka counter-height, and bar height, which is raised to about 40-42". Standard dining tables are 29-30".

Bacon is a gift, a reward of life, so it will remain in my diet as will cauliflower. Avocado should have been retired when avocado-colored appliances went out. Those super high barstools with the small seats are outright painful to my joints. I have to leave early when friends opt for a get-together with those options.

I'm tired of vilifying cooked food. I happen to like a medium-well to (properly) well-done steak and no it doesn't have to be a hockey puck and is far from "dried out" when you know how to cook it. Problem is, few people know how to cook one. Same thing with eggs. A basted egg with a cooked yolk is a combination of creamy and fluffy. I enjoy an over-medium to over easy egg at times when they are cooked properly. Sadly there too, many don't know how to cook them.

And please folks... just what part of the chicken IS the "nugget" anyway??? On second thought, I'd rather not know.

Nuggets vs tenders

Obviously I'm a food idiot. I have several kinds of rice in my cabinet now, but sometimes I want cauliflower used in place of rice, no matter what one wishes to call it. Cook for my carb-hungry DH and you would too. I like cauliflower. Avocado toast is one trend I've yet to try, but I do like avocados. And what if avocado toast in my current adult state (hedging in case I revert to childhood sometime in the future) is the equivalent of PB & J's in my childhood? What if I want to eat it every day? Well, I will then. Pbbblllltttt ; P

If someone wants to dribble black truffle oil on my eggs easy over, or my mac, cheddar, and gruyere who am I to complain? I've not tried it, and might like it. I have square plates. I have rectangular plates. I have oval, and round, and I am seriously thinking of getting some triangular plates. Ok, not really. But yes, I've square and rectangular plates. I like them. Served grilled burgers on them day before yesterday. Not sky-scraper burgers, but maybe 3 stories high burgers... they plumped up, filled with gorgonzola, and were quite good. By the time I got my tomato, curly lettuce, and red onion on it, well, it was pretty darned tall. I love homemade mayo. Never made or had the experience of trying homemade ketchup.

Now salads... yeah, if there are those wilty pieces, or worse, the big chunky white ends. See that a lot. But if I am served a vegetable of any kind in a restaurant, I tend to feel grateful - even if it's just a sprinkling of microgreens, which again, I rather like. Seems to me vegetables are an afterthought that is frequently given no thought.

Yep, I'm a food idiot.

ETA: When Marcel Vigneron started topping everything with foam on Top Chef I was intrigued. Not enough to do it but I did wonder how much flavor each added to the dish. I have to agree, it does look like spit. Wish I'd never clicked on dcarch's link.. can't get that closeup out of my head now.

The clients that I have drawn bar stools for have generally requested either 26-27" seat height or 29-30" seat height, and we've never made bar stools with 36" seat height, although I know they exist. I don't think they are for residential use, however, and I've mainly drawn bar stools for residences or yachts. I've never measured a bar stool in a restaurant, but I know I would not like one with a 36" seat height.

I disagree with much of what was in the original article said, especially with regard to homemade mayo/ketchup. I won't eat commercial ketchup (too sweet), and I prefer my own mayo to bottled. I also love avocados, cauliflower, and zoodles.

And please remove the tail also from shrimps if I order shrimps!!!

The tails do not add flavor to the recipes and I can't digest them.

Thank you very much.

dcarch

Speaking of tails, I had Royal Reds (served in the shell) for the first time recently. OMG! They taste like little lobsters. Such a treat!

Lars, there are plenty of people who think that a raised bar in a kitchen is a good idea, or those who have home bars, most of which are raised. And 36" stools are easy to find. You just had customers who did not go that route.

Well I agree with the other vertically challenged about the tall tables and the sunken booths!

I'm not one to eat in "fancy" places, but did discover avacado toast while in Vail for a wedding and now eat it twice a week! LOVE it! (mashed avacado mixed with a bit of hot salsa on an english muffin toasted with cheese, sometimes with turkey bacon, sometimes not. Topped with a fried egg!)

Have tried the cauliflower "fried rice" and it was fine, might have to go for that if I have to start low carbing, but then you get so much sodium from soy sauce it counteracts the benefits!

Lars, there are plenty of people who think that a raised bar in a kitchen is a good idea.

Perhaps, but as I said, none of my clients have that, and so I have no experience with that.

Your clients are smart.

Lars, I had to go measure my bar stools... 30" and too tall for me to be comfortable. I got mine on-sale at PotteryBarn, so I figure they are pretty standard. The only reason I even bought them was because the counter between the living room and the kitchen looked silly with nothing there. Others like to sit there and talk to those cooking, so I guess they were a good purchase.

- Harshly acidic "housemade pickles". I love a good pickle, but too many chefs are making pickles that taste like straight Heinz White Vinegar in solid form. And what's with the idea of putting them on the side of an Eggs Benedict?!?

- Chefs, please stop sprinkling pomegranate seeds indiscriminately over dishes. Honestly, there are dishes where these delightful sweet-tart seeds are NOT an asset.

- Also, please stop drizzling kewpie mayo in zig-zag designs over the tops of everything - salads, pizza, roasted potatoes, and my steak. I don't like the stuff to begin with, and I fail to see how it improves a grilled shrimp.

- Please do not boast about how everything is "made in house" when your dessert consists of a leaden chocolate brownie sweet enough to cause instant caries and stale enough to require a steak knife to cut through. Dressing it up with those stupid drizzles of oversweetened berry puree and pseudo-Hershey's chocolate syrup will not make it any more edible.

Run, do not walk, to your nearest decent neighborhood bakery and help keep them in business with its far superior fruit tarts or cheesecake slices. Heck, even Costco offers a nice pumpkin cheesecake when it's the season.

- A great salad is a work of art. But it is never drowned in dressing, enough to float a barge. When I lift up a green leaf, it is not supposed to weep a sea of vinaigrette back onto the plate!

I'm another one who is no fan of bar height tables & chairs. Nor of swimming salad. Yuck. I always order my dressing on the side. I make my own mayo using my grandmother's recipe. My husband wants that horrible white stuff that's not even mayo. Go figure!

I don't know if this counts as a food trend, its more a food related pet peeve. Please, let me NOT like something in peace. It is perfectly acceptable to allow an adult to simply dislike a food item. When discovering in conversation that I don't like seafood, or venison, or coffee, or lamb, or whatever, or that i like steak cooked differently than you do, just let it go. Don't insist that I "haven't had it cooked the right way" before offering me recipes or techniques. Don't proclaim that I "don't know what I am missing." You do not hold some sort of magic recipe that will make me a shrimp fiend. You don't. Let. It. Go. Really, it's okay. The world won't end because we like different things.

The worst ones are those who tell me that if i follow great aunt Matilda's Deer Stew recipe to the letter, I will think I am eating beef. Or some such nonsense. Then why can't i just eat beef? I like beef. And I don't like stew anyway.

The other way applies too. I am sorry you don't like eggnog or broccoli. There is no need to exclaim your dislike for it when you see me enjoying it. Especially as I didn't offer you any or ask your opinion on it. (If I ask, please feel free,but i never ask, so knock it off) This happens at work a lot. Random people come in and feel the need to comment on whatever I am cooking or eating, then offering tips and techniques and opinions. I just wanna eat what I like, whether you like it or not, in peace, please.

Some languages have a word to say to people whom you encounter while they're eating. Like you walk into he staff lounge, and a coworker is having lunch. Like we say "bless you" when someone sneezes, functionally, because some kind of comment seems to be required, this kind of word usually means something like "happy eating", and gets you past the awkward moment. We need that. Amylou might have fewer issues if there were such a work in common English (American) use.

I have to admit I've been known to say the "you haven't had it made right" kind of thing, because there's so much bad food preparation out there, but not usually for a plain dislike. As in, mushrooms don't have to be rubbery, neither do shrimp, oatmeal doesn't have to be gluey or soupy or sweet, well done meat doesn't have to be shoe leather nor hockey puck, okra doesn't have to be slimy, but corn on the cob pretty much always gets stuck in your teeth.

Jakkom's very funny list reminded me of the brownies in the elementary school cafeteria. They tasted good but you couldn't break them without biting-jaw strength. Banging them against the crockery was more likely to chip or crack the crockery than get chips off the brownies.

My new peeve to share? Meat focussed restaurants (steakhouse, bbq, etc.) that consider flash steamed frozen broccoli and cole slaw to be adequate vegetables.

An old thread showed up and kitchens forum and they mentioned you plllog. I don't know how to contact you directly so sorry for the conversation interruption.

My oatmeal always comes out gummy but I eat it anyway.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2986029/ths-gardenweb-kitchen-old-timers

Thanks, Yeonassky!

I have allergies. Not dislike, not intolerance, I'm ALLERGIC. All alliums* and seafood. So I always have to ask when eating somewhere other than home or family. And inevitably, I have to explain why. I can't tell you how many people say, "Oh surely just a little bit won't hurt." Ummm... Yes it will. In the case of seafood, especially, it can kill me. I shouldn't have to go into detail every time! *And yes, I do have to cook everything from scratch. Convenience foods are loaded with onions & garlic. There are days I swear they probably put onions in ice cream!

Not trying to be funny. Nothing funny about having allergies.

They do make garlic ice cream.

https://www.google.com/search?q=garlic+ice+cream&rlz=1C1RNHN_enUS472US472&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiSiKLG5KXlAhVmmeAKHYnXCxoQ_AUIEygC&biw=1250&bih=695

I also once in a while make black garlic ice cream.

dcarch

dcarch - seriously? Black garlic ice cream ... Besides basic ice cream ingredients and black garlic, what's in it? My son & DIL are garlic-crazy. I don't eat at their house LOL.

ediej.....Soooo sorry about this allergy!

A friend has lovely parties and I always ask about food allergies and try to add something vegetarian/vegan or if I know of an allergy, that free!

ediej1209 , have you ever tasted or seen black garlic before? Black garlic are made from regular garlic, but black garlic are nothing like garlic. They are kind of sweet, have no garlic flavor. Very interesting food.

There are many recipes for black garlic ice cream.

Here is what I had made

dcarch

I wish I had the patience, time, and yes, courage - ha! - to make black garlic, dcarch. I love trying new things, and the descriptions I've read of it sound wonderful to me (big garlic fan). Alas. DH, a bacon lover, made a horrible face and pronounced a stern 'no' when I suggested making a bourbon brown-sugar bacon ice cream this weekend. He's just not adventurous and I couldn't eat it all alone : ( I think it's fantastic how you are always trying such interesting foods (tripe, black garlic ice cream, hostas). Bravo for you - one never knows what will entice us. I did make bacon jam one year, incredibly sweet. DH put it on his steak (not for me, I don't like sweet steaks, I guess) but I found it good on crostinis. Which has nothing to do with black garlic...

Edie, it's got to be hard for you, having such serious allergies. My mom was also seriously allergic to shellfish. She loved it too... her allergies hit her around her mid-50's as I recall. And yes, people get that mentality of "a little won't hurt". They don't know.

amylou, I will have to agree, that's a pet-peeve of mine: When random people tell me what they don't like of something I've prepared, in a rude manner. One year I made a large holiday feast, and for one who disliked (not allergic to) onions, I told her which of the dishes had onions and which didn't (I tailored alternates for her). She ignored me, and ate Ina Garten's recipe for cream spinach. She raved. And raved. Took seconds. Then I reminded her, there are onions in that. She clattered her fork back onto my good dishes, made a horrific face, and went on for 3 minutes about how awful onions were and how much she hated them. Really?

ROTFL! A relative proclaimed he didn't like lamb, but had second helpings at my mother's house. My mother was a good cook, of course. It sounds like your onion hater felt tricked (though you had warned her) and needed to go on about onions because she was so perturbed at having been caught liking the spinach with onions in it.

I don't know if this is an actual trend, but over the weekend I encountered a menu at a major national chain family restaurant, close to where I was visiting. They used to be a great place where everybody could find something they liked. The current menu seems designed to fatten up poor Hansel whose scrawny chicken bone tricked the witch. It seemed like every normal thing had another whole meal on top of it!

I am so thankful I have no food allergies or sensitivities. I think that would be awful, especially if it was one that developed later in life and to something you used to enjoy!

I will eat just about anything......I have only a couple of strong aversions: tapioca (I think it is a texture thing) and okra. And I'm sorry but you will never convince me that okra even tastes good let alone can be served with a normal, nonglutinous texture. It's just nasty! I am also not wild about any organ meat except for liver.