“I’ll have what she’s having.” A memorable punch line, however not a lot of a menu technique — until you consider that best-selling qualifies as a delicacies.
And but I preserve seeing the identical dishes time and again, usually on menus whose identities are outlined largely by recognition: goat cheese salad, a riff on Buffalo rooster wings, Caesar salad, avocado toast, mac and cheese reboots and their upscale cousin, cacio e pepe. Chili crisp on prime of the whole lot however dessert.
Chef David Chang single-handedly remodeled Brussels sprouts from a tragic fall-season also-ran to a year-round star when he opened Momufuku in 2004 in New York Metropolis — the addition of bacon and kimchee will try this — and to this present day variations on that amped up little cabbage are a menu staple far past Chang’s empire. We’ve graduated from a quest for the distinctive to menus crowded with variations of acquainted favorites, as an increasing number of of us appear content material with much less and fewer, choice-wise.
I can’t name out a single restaurant by title as a result of they’re in sufficient bother as it’s, between an uptick in working prices and a downturn within the variety of diners who’ll get off the sofa at mealtime. Tariffs may knock avocado toast off the recognition record until Mexico will get an unlikely exemption, and worthwhile wine lists will shrink. Eating places are understandably extra threat averse than ever, so I want them income and survival at the same time as I flip away from those that trip the culinary slipstream.
Homogeneity is an awfully well mannered euphemism for the nationwide agenda proper now, because the federal authorities ushers individuals of shade out of the U.S. and encourages individuals whose shade is white to come back on in. Nothing is resistant to the exclusionary mindset, not the humanities, sports activities, medical analysis and healthcare; not even each day life, the place sameness takes maintain in additional refined methods.
The mash-up hit parade menu is a pendulum swing away from the place we had been just some years in the past, when a hard-core definition of authenticity dominated, and a transparent hyperlink between a chef’s background and the menu was as important as knife expertise. No extra. Anybody cooks something, so long as it has a confirmed observe report: In a single night time a chef may be a pizzaiolo, a New England lobsterman, a wings- or guac-master.
I’m not recommending cultural meals purity — it will restrict me just about to my grandmother’s brisket and kugel, if I had been a chef — however there must be a candy spot between that angle and lowest frequent denominator meals. A dish’s origin story ought to contain one thing extra attention-grabbing than the variety of models bought.
I usually flip for refuge to ethnic spots, lengthy a standard portal for immigrants who construct their households’ future on dishes they grew up with, locations the place I’m unlikely to come across generic choices. And sure, I’m conscious of the unhappy irony: Authenticity, on this case, solely provides to those eating places’ precarious state as a result of homeowners, employees and diners who weren’t born listed below are susceptible to ICE displaying up and not using a reservation.
The risk is in all places, however asserting one’s roots on a menu, proper now, feels riskier nonetheless.
There’s an ever-expanding row of meals stalls on a busy road close to the place I dwell, and at first I noticed them as incubators for bold cooks serving an array of worldwide dishes. The meals truck Evil Cooks is now a brick-and-mortar operation whose homeowners had been 2025 James Beard semifinalists for greatest chef, California area, their second time on the record. It’s a pleasant dream; it may occur once more.
However currently I stroll by even when I’ve different dinner plans, simply to see that everybody remains to be there — the taco operation, the shawarma guys, the Korean stand, the brand new Peruvian stall. The visibility that was these eateries’ greatest asset now looks like their greatest disadvantage.
I depend on previous standbys, too, locations that found out who they had been years in the past and have caught with it. There’s a pleasant logic once they introduce dishes; the brand new stuff performs nicely with others moderately than making me scratch my head on the disconnect.
I think about {that a} proponent of the greatest-hits menu will say it’s variety on a plate, however I don’t purchase it. To me, it’s constraint masquerading as variety. We pull again and fake in any other case, and the narrower our visual field turns into, the bigger the terrain we outline as not us, not ours.
I recognize that generally we’re after consolation meals once we exit to eat, that what we crave is an expertise that dredges up completely happy reminiscences of the identical dish we’re staring it, which is one cause classics preserve promoting.
I’m as completely happy as anybody to face in line for a bagel sandwich right here, there or in all places, if I so select. Or to take my choose of any of the 4 blister-crust pizzas inside 5 minutes of my entrance door. I simply don’t desire a Prime 10 mentality to be the default. I don’t at all times need to have what she’s having.
Karen Stabiner’s most up-to-date guide is “Technology Chef: Risking It All for a New American Dream.”
