Page 26 - foodservice magazine September 2019

26
RANT
HYPERSENSITIVE TO THE OVER-HYPED
SICK OF THE SWATH OF TRENDY FOOD TERMS THAT HAVE EMERGED OVER THE YEARS, ANTHONY HUCKSTEP DECIDES HE’S FINALLY HAD HIS FILL OF HYPER-COOL INFLUENCER LINGUISTS.
It was one of those days. I stepped out of bed barefoot onto a piece of lego, spilt coffee
on my favourite Iron Maiden PJs, and the dog pinched my avo on toast before I could ‘ava go at it myself. No wonder she’s got such a shiny coat. Christ, it’s not even 5:30am.
Needless to say, I wasn’t in a good mood.
So when I opened my inbox and clicked on a new restaurant’s press release, I immediately assumed the Abe Simpson ‘old man shakes fist at sky’ stance (quite a sight in fluffy Metallica slippers and a velvet Slayer dressing gown) when I read a line about the chef ’s ethos.
It had all the usual colourful adjectives about the inspiration and the execution of a restaurant full of the self-belief and hope
of a POD, but one thing really got my goat: the term ‘hyper- seasonal produce’.
Not seasonal. Oh no, this wasn’t just in season; this was hyper-seasonal. So seasonal it snubs its nose at the mediocrity of anything that’s lazy enough to be simply ‘in season’.
Hyper-seasonal. Definition: plucked from the ground in hyper-speed and into the mouths of the over-hyped influencers.
Sounds rarer than rocking
horse poo, but hyper-seasonal produce, so I’m told, is produce that’s minutes out of the ground and into your face before you can fathom the food miles.
Hardly believable for a restaurant setting, unless we’re all eating in the garden using trowels instead of cutlery. What’s next? Eat directly out of the ground for that elusive ‘exactly-seasonal’ experience? Imagine the embarrassment of those uncool enough to simply eat hyper-seasonal produce!
crackling. You don’t have a crispy winter’s morning, do you?
Something is either crisp, or it is not. Although used prolifically in food media and on menus to describe something that is crisp, ‘crispy’ actually sounds like something that is only sort-of crisp. Not it’s intention at all.
It’s like U2’s song, ‘With or without you’. Sure, the band itself is a tad redundant, and certainly not my cup of tea, but the lyrics, “I can’t live, with or without you,” could have been
Anthony Huckstep is the national restaurant critic for Delicious. and a food writer for The Australian, GQ Australia and QANTAS Magazine.
Come on guys. Quit the veneer of BS and maybe just focus on the season and cooking it nicely.
It’s like the word ‘crispy’. Oh man, now I’m shaking two fists at the sky.
Crispy was never a word. It pains me to even pen it here in this column, and whenever a subeditor sneaks it into my copy they receive an email explaining my loss of faith in humanity.
The word is crisp. Crisp is already and adjective. Crisp- skinned barramundi. Crisp
delivered more economically. “I can’t live” actually surmises the same sentiment, and music to the ears of some that would rather have a mouth full of live bees than listen to Bono.
Anyway, I can talk. I listen to the crisp, hypersonic beats of rumbling metal.
Please, PR groups, writers, bloggers and influencers, and anyone else who spends time writing menus or describing food, simplify, and tell it like it is.
We diners aren’t hyper-fooled.
“Something is either crisp, or it is not. Although used prolifically in food media and on menus to describe something that is crisp, ‘crispy’ actually sounds like something that is only sort-of crisp. Not it’s intention at all.”