So after I noted my "Top 20 Local Restaurant Trends of the Decade," I received some cards and letters (actually one e-mail, forwarded), asking me if I thought there were any bad local restaurant trends emerging. I do, and indeed there are. So I made a list. The original was longer, but many were more personal rants than trends. And we don’t want to get personal…do we?
1. Overwrought Menu Descriptions
Just clue us in without wearing us out. No one cares about the beef rancher’s first name and middle initial. Innocently, we start reading...then our mind begins to wander…and then we start to dream of a plain ol’ bacon-cheddar burger…and end up ordering just that, never once wondering about the number on the steer’s purple USDA stamp.
2. Deconstruction of Popular Dishes
Creative? Yes. Satisfying? No. Is it time for them to go away? Yes. Now. Just toss the damn Caesar salad.
3. Trios of Sliders
OK, maybe if they’re three completely different items on different breads. Otherwise the only legitimate multiple is 30 or 100, the number of sliders in White Castle’s Crave Case and Crave Crate, respectively. You getting hungry…or disgusted?
4. Flavored Vodkas
The shelves on the back bars of our favorite haunts are collapsing under their weight. Distillers have infused every item in the Fruit Department, and we hear they’re headin’ for Produce... Can I get a Bibb Lettuce martini, please?
5. The Deep Frying of Anyol’thing
We need to stop…the…frying. Twinkies are lovely as is, as are Snickers bars and Oreos. Now we have places serving fried butter and fried coke—no local places quite yet, fortunately. But you know what they say about St. Louis being the last place for trends…
6. Faint Smears of Sauce
Same thing happened the last time I used a cheap brush to paint a door—streaks, lines, poor result. Go ahead, be creative…but I’d like a tidge more sauce, please.
7. The New Worst Server Line
I first thought it a fluke from an ill-trained, first-day server, then I heard it again, then again: “Is that tasting all right to you?” So far I’ve managed to stifle my pent up litany of possible responses. But if I hear that line one more time…
8. Calling It What It Ain’t
I’m sorry, but a deconstructed Oysters Rockefeller with no trace of a butter sauce should not be so named. A gumbo that contains corn and lima beans is not a gumbo…it’s Cajun Vegetable Soup. A Caesar salad must always be made with Romaine lettuce. Beef Wellington should contain liver pâté and chopped mushrooms in some form, or it’s not Beef Wellington! I could go on.
9. Outdated Website Menus
The more I look, the more I see. Rampant online neglect. Mr. Restaurant Owner: Since you’ve bothered to post a menu, can ya humor us by keeping it current? Or else we’ll continue to show up and order what we saw online…at the price we saw online.
10. Old-School Salt and Pepper Shakers
Personally, we wouldn’t make soup stock with the years-old pepper found on most restaurant tables. Besides, most shakers are so clogged they require a swift smack to release even a veil of stale pepper dust. How 'bout jumping into this decade with something that became common in the last: pepper mills on every table. And for you forward-thinkers, sea-salt mills as well. We promise we won’t steal them.
Related: Dave Lowry plays along.
