Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mark the passing of another spent trend; a complex soul, with strength far beyond its diminutive stature, a global phenomenon whose star shone so fast, so bright, that we will bask in its warming glow for generations to come. We just won’t tweet about it quite so much. Like so many before it, the inevitable journey from chic to cheap is now at its end – so rest, old friend, on your hastily stacked shelf in some corner of a foreign supermarket that is forever Aldi. We will think of you often, as we raise our cheap plastic glasses of warm bubble tea and toast your name with fondness… key-noah… kwin-oh-a… kin-wah… we will never forget you, and we will never agree on how to pronounce your name.
Time is a fickle mistress. One moment you’re ras el hanout, the next you’re Old El Paso. Trends in the food industry come and go with the tides; we slip off our shoes, dip in a toe, and enjoy the brief sensation while we wait with impatience for the next wave to arrive. It’s a cultural obsession as old as culture itself. The ruling classes of ancient civilisations would display their wealth on the dinner table, showcasing rare delicacies from far-flung lands, mysterious fruits and exotic beasts the likes of which their guests had never seen. To showcase the novel was the flex of all flexes, a surefire way to cement your status in the public consciousness – and as Oscar Wilde so sagely put it, there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. Nothing has changed, we’re still just as thirsty for all things new, except now the world’s treasures are not only more accessible but infinitely shareable too. What was once the curio of the wealthy elite is now available to anyone with a smartphone, and the pace of change has never been greater.
For most commercially-minded chefs, keeping up with that pace is just another part of the job. Just as no self-respecting socialite would dream of being seen in last season’s collection, so too must the avant garde kitchen stay abreast of the times and adjust its menus accordingly. Trends arrive and spread so quickly across social media platforms that there’s barely time to master them before the next big thing comes rolling into town. Remember chimichurri? Jeeeeeez, that’s so 2021! South America’s yesterday’s news, it’s all about the Africas now; you want to get yourself some chermoula, mate. Harissa? Done to death. Berbere’s where it’s at – Eithiopia: it’s a bit more authentic, innit. I mean, who uses a hashtag with 100k posts? If it’s not sub 5k, you can count me out.
It’s not entirely a bad thing. The fact that more of the world’s larder is now more accessible to more of the world’s population is something to be celebrated if, like me, you’re endlessly curious. There is great joy to be had in ‘discovering’ a new ingredient, method or dish, it enriches the overall experience of immersing oneself in food culture; like collecting edible Pokémon, each constantly evolving into new variations of themselves. Where it does become tiresome is when the faddism, and not the food, is placed front and centre. Take the tonka bean, for example. In and of itself the tonka bean is a beautiful and intriguing thing, part vanilla – part almond, spicy, fruity and full of complexity. In the right hands it can bring a whole new dimension to sweet and savoury dishes alike, but in the wrong hands it becomes a mere curiosity added to a menu for novelty alone. And good god, did it fall into the wrong hands. At one point in the mid-noughties it seemed that every gastro pub the length of the country had a tonka bean brulée on the menu, and not because the bean was coveted for its rich, complex flavour but because it was almost the same as vanilla, but not. And it sounded cooler. I saw it with smoked salmon, with a ham hock terrine, baked into bread, in risotto, in mayonnaise, even on a roast chicken. For a short while the western world went tonka bean mad, then as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone. Replaced by sriracha, probably.
This, I can live with. I’ve been as guilty as the next person of taking a trip on the trendy train in order to sell a menu (the crimes I’ve committed with yuzu). Unfortunately, it’s all part of the game but at least it’s honest, if a little misguided. It’s the flip side of this that I struggle with, the deliberately misleading trend of the culinary alias. Allow me to expand:
Right now, it’s June and we’re deep into wild garlic season. It’s everywhere. So prevalent is this springtime allium that it’s now arguably trendier to leave it off a menu than to use it. But it’s good stuff, and if you can be bothered to do the leg work yourself, it’s free! Which leaves you with a quandary: to forsake the wild garlic and miss out on one of June’s most abundant crops, or to use it and be lost in the mêlée of #wildgarlic posts alongside every other menu with a semblance of seasonality at its core. The answer, for some, is to do both: Ramsons, ramps, cowleek, buckrams, bear’s garlic, wild allium, field scallion – they’re all synonyms for the same thing, but unless you know that you’ll be duped into believing you’re experiencing something edgy; something new. And as we’ve already established, in this world of ever-shortening attention spans, new equals good. In all honesty I’m not even sure why it bothers me so much. You could argue that it’s just canny marketing, that as long as people think they’re experiencing something different it’s a job well done. I just find it a little Machiavellian when something as ubiquitous as mangetout suddenly becomes snow peas, or common-a-seaside kelp is rechristened as Scottish kombu. Where does it stop? It’s like the custard/crème Anglaise days all over again.
First world problems, I know. But hey, I live in the first world (just about), what else do I have to occupy myself with? Maybe I should just wind my neck in and resign myself to the fact that hipsterism is nothing new, it’s just good at changing its name. In fact, yeah, to hell with it, the world keeps on spinning and there’s nothing any of us can do to change it, so sit back and suck it in. The sun’s shining and my tummy’s rumbling; I’m off into town for a schooner of flat white coffee milk stout and a plate of Scarborough woof con fritas. Salute, bitches!
EMRE GRUB 