Press
Epicurious.com Releases List of 10 Worst Restaurant Trends
NEW YORK, September 19, 2005 – Epicurious.com, the premier food web site, today issued a list of the top 10 worst restaurant trends..
1. Celebrity chefs who never cook: It's time to put down the glass of champers, trade the pinstriped Hugo Boss for a white chef jacket, and get back behind the stove.
2. Restaurants with more publicists than cooks: Telltale signs that an eatery will be short-lived: More attention and money are dedicated to the décor than the menu; the phone number or address is a "secret."
3. Fancified raw cuisine: Despite several prominent chefs' exhortations, this tasteless, unhealthy trend is both time-consuming to make and expensive to buy (think $12 "tomato tartare" – aka salsa).
4. Sell-out Sams: There is a burgeoning crowd of chefs and sommeliers schilling low-quality products.
5. Megaplexes: Restaurants the size of a football field, with menus to match.
6. Menus brimming with more information than an iPod database: To enjoy the brioche bread pudding, it's really not necessary to know the name of the farm that supplied the eggs.
7. Overuse of the terms "local" and "artisanal:" These days, you can't open a restaurant without claiming that you're truly "buying local."
8. The 5:30 or 10:30 rule: Call many spots for a reservation less than two weeks in advance, and you'll likely be told that these are the only time slots available. But show up at 8 p.m., and often you'll find plenty of tables to spare.
9. Unisex bathrooms: It's hard enough to share bathrooms with the opposite sex at home.
10. Foam: It has become an oddly-textured, melting lump on the plate at every boîte with culinary pretensions.
"Restaurants need to focus less energy on being trendy and more on satisfying its customers' palate," said Tanya Steel, Editor-in-Chief, Epicurious.com. "Today, consumers are looking for more of a quality dining experience, rather than a trendy experience."
For more information please visit www.Epicurious.com.
About Epicurious.com
Epicurious.com, a CondéNet site, incorporates more than 50,000 recipes from the premier brands in food journalism, Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines, as well as original material and tips focused on cooking, entertaining and cocktails.
CondéNet (www.condenet.com), the leading creator and developer of upscale lifestyle brands online, providing enjoyable, useful services that tie into and build upon the heritage of the world's most prestigious magazines. Today, CondeNet the deepest online brands in the vertical categories of food (Epicurius.com), travel, (Concierge.com), and fashion (STYLE.COM and Mens.STYLE.COM). Condé Net is an Internet unit of Condé Nast.
NEW YORK, September 19, 2005 – Epicurious.com, the premier food web site, today issued a list of the top 10 worst restaurant trends..
1. Celebrity chefs who never cook: It's time to put down the glass of champers, trade the pinstriped Hugo Boss for a white chef jacket, and get back behind the stove.
2. Restaurants with more publicists than cooks: Telltale signs that an eatery will be short-lived: More attention and money are dedicated to the décor than the menu; the phone number or address is a "secret."
3. Fancified raw cuisine: Despite several prominent chefs' exhortations, this tasteless, unhealthy trend is both time-consuming to make and expensive to buy (think $12 "tomato tartare" – aka salsa).
4. Sell-out Sams: There is a burgeoning crowd of chefs and sommeliers schilling low-quality products.
5. Megaplexes: Restaurants the size of a football field, with menus to match.
6. Menus brimming with more information than an iPod database: To enjoy the brioche bread pudding, it's really not necessary to know the name of the farm that supplied the eggs.
7. Overuse of the terms "local" and "artisanal:" These days, you can't open a restaurant without claiming that you're truly "buying local."
8. The 5:30 or 10:30 rule: Call many spots for a reservation less than two weeks in advance, and you'll likely be told that these are the only time slots available. But show up at 8 p.m., and often you'll find plenty of tables to spare.
9. Unisex bathrooms: It's hard enough to share bathrooms with the opposite sex at home.
10. Foam: It has become an oddly-textured, melting lump on the plate at every boîte with culinary pretensions.
"Restaurants need to focus less energy on being trendy and more on satisfying its customers' palate," said Tanya Steel, Editor-in-Chief, Epicurious.com. "Today, consumers are looking for more of a quality dining experience, rather than a trendy experience."
For more information please visit www.Epicurious.com.
About Epicurious.com
Epicurious.com, a CondéNet site, incorporates more than 50,000 recipes from the premier brands in food journalism, Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines, as well as original material and tips focused on cooking, entertaining and cocktails.
CondéNet (www.condenet.com), the leading creator and developer of upscale lifestyle brands online, providing enjoyable, useful services that tie into and build upon the heritage of the world's most prestigious magazines. Today, CondeNet the deepest online brands in the vertical categories of food (Epicurius.com), travel, (Concierge.com), and fashion (STYLE.COM and Mens.STYLE.COM). Condé Net is an Internet unit of Condé Nast.
