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WE'VE PUT FOOD where our mouth is all year round. And along the way, we might have picked up a few stray lessons from traipsing around the city from eatery to eatery. While we are all making year-end wish lists, here’s hoping some of these observations make all of our eating experiences more palatable in the new year ahead.
And yes, take it with a pinch of salt.
No more multi-cuisine restaurants…
Leave this to the food carts on the streets, and even they aren’t dabbling in this sort of pop universalism. We don’t want to negotiate a cross-continental tour while trying to navigate our meal. We’re always open to experiments, but within the comforting caress of a single cuisine.
No more menus masquerading as novels…
We’ve already made 800 decisions before arriving at the table or bar counter, and we don’t need more work. We’re here to have fun: get to the point, keep the menu tight – bangers only – and mix it up with a selection of weekly chalkboard specials for your regulars.
Drop the bottle of truffle oil…
and step away from it, immediately. Stop duping the vegetarians and harassing the rest of us by thrusting truffle oil into every single dish willy-nilly. And it isn’t even real, we know – otherwise, it wouldn’t be everywhere. We thought we’d already had a conversation about this last year. Can you hear us in the kitchen?
No more matcha…
please. Just stop. We’ve had enough; every little hole in the wall doesn’t have to add it to their menu.
No more QR code menus…
enough said.
No dish descriptions longer than 15 seconds…
between the wait-staff and the customer for every serving. Please stop the sermons before we dig into our dishes. If it can’t be said succinctly, it can be skipped.
Name your dishes…
Stop simply listing out your shopping list; might as well add the detergent then. Learn from the mixologists, who are gracious enough to tell us, it is their take on a highball or old-fashioned. Give us the name of the base dish and then play your riff.
Pump up the lights…
and lower the volume. We need to read the menu to order our dishes – it’s a commercial transaction, remember. And we’d actually like to talk to our dining companions. Instead, we’re juggling between the menu, the torch on our phones and trying to say something witty to our dates in the gaps between club hits.
Stop allowing the influencers from using superlatives…
when it comes to any of your dishes. It doesn’t matter that So-and-So with a million followers thinks you’re a secret or you’ve got the best. In fact, we’re a little tired of old haunts or new favourites being deemed as discoveries.
Cheap can be good too…
It doesn’t have to cost a liver and a lung. It doesn’t have to be drowned in melted cheese. It doesn’t have to be towering with toppings. It doesn’t have to be super-sized.
Also, diners: let’s make finishing our meals cool again in 2026. Enough of the excess, the plates of wasted food.
