The hottest things in food don’t always live up to the hype.
No, I don’t want half a chunk of tomato on my burger, or to pay $40 for a small dish at a food truck. These food trends have gotten out of control!
Popular Food Trends that Need to Stop
I can’t be the only one who feels this way. So, I scoured the internet in search of solidarity, and I found it – and so much more.
Here are all the popular food trends everyone online hopes will end soon.
Bougie Food Trucks
Can we please go back to when food trucks did one thing well for a reasonable price?
No one wants to pay restaurant prices for your tiny burger with an entire tomato shoved between the buns.
I want traditional food trucks back. I want to get a good, fast burger that I can chow down in a parking lot for a reasonable price.
No Menus
I absolutely hate it when restaurant websites don’t have menus. You’d think that would be the most crucial part of their site, but nah, they don’t think it’s necessary.
Instead, I have to start an online order just to see if I want to eat there.
And don’t even get me started on all the QR code menus when I’m actually at the restaurant. I hate them.
Fancy Street Tacos
High-end restaurants trying to capitalize on the taco craze don’t understand the appeal of street tacos.
You don’t charge $20 bucks for 3 street tacos.
Also, street tacos don’t need pickled onions, truffles, caviar, and whatever other weird stuff you’re putting in them.
Just give me the meat in the taco shell with some cilantro, and I’m golden.
Trendy Poor Food
Please stop making “poor people’s food” trendy. It drives the prices up so much that the poor folks who invented these treasures can’t even afford them anymore.
When rich folk discovered things like ox tail, chicken wings, spam, and crawfish, they turned them into a “delicacy,” and now a lot of people can no longer enjoy their favorite staples.
Stupid Food
There’s an entire subculture where people waste precious food attempting to make the most horrific concoctions imaginable.
It’s all for clicks and engagement.
I hate this food trend the most. It’s just wasteful.
Recipe Hacks
Why do we love the word “hack” so much? Making a slight change to a recipe isn’t a hack.
People be like “I swapped a teaspoon of regular sugar for a teaspoon of brown sugar – use my hack for a little extra sweetness!”
Making the recipe easier or heartier with a unique trick would be a hack. For example, our mac & cheese hacks actually transform the dish (well, most of them do. We might be a little hypocritical here).
Ugly Buildings
Back in the day, we could drive through a town and recognize the different fast food places by their unique building designs. Pizza Hut had the iconic red hats, Wendy’s had the big front windows, and McDonald’s reminded us of a circus.
Now, they’re all standard beige, which makes the real estate easier to offload but also makes the cities boring.
Messing with Service Workers
PR Image Factory via Shutterstock.com.
People are notoriously rude to service workers. They’ll make ridiculous requests for video views and engagement while refusing to see that they’re hurting the real person in front of them who just wants to do their job and go home.
Some folks aren’t even doing it for the views; they’re just downright rude. They think service workers are beneath them somehow, treating them like the scum on the bottom of their shoe.
It’s gross. We all need to be kinder to each other.
Heart Attack Desserts
We don’t need deep-fried Twinkies stuffed with fried Oreos or donuts over milkshakes covered with chocolate sauce.
These insane desserts usually pack in more calories than recommended for a whole day, and people eat the entire thing!
Picture Perfect
Some places try so hard to make food look good for photos that the quality decreases.
It doesn’t matter, though. The people who go there would rather have a perfect shot for Instagram than a delicious meal.
I prefer food that tastes good over food that looks beautiful every time.
Recipe Blogs
We don’t hate recipe blogs, but we hate that all food bloggers think they need to write a 2000-word treatise on why they’ve loved banana bread since childhood.
Can we just have the recipe, please?
Part of this is Google’s fault. It forced bloggers to write 2000-word articles to rank, and most recipes don’t actually need 2000 words.
ASMR
I don’t understand ASMR’s appeal in general, but I really don’t get it for food.
Does anyone really enjoy the sounds of someone else chewing?
Tall Burgers
Everyone loves a delicious burger, but the trend where it’s so tall you need a detachable jaw to bite into it needs to end.
It’s even worse when the majority of the burger is toppings (like the aforementioned giant chunk of tomato).
Fusion Everything
Fusion is fantastic, but not everything needs to be fusion.
I don’t need sushi tacos; sometimes I just want sushi, and sometimes I just want tacos.
Bacon
Bacon is great for breakfast and on a BLT.
We don’t need bacon in green beans, smothered in chocolate, in our Bloody Marys, or with our grilled chicken.
It’s even worse for vegetarians or people who don’t eat pork. I hate ordering something like beans only to discover it’s floating in bacon grease. I can’t imagine how a vegetarian would feel about it.
Sysco Everything
I miss unique restaurants that cook fresh, made-to-order food. Even chains used to make things in-house.
Nowadays, most restaurants contract with companies like Sysco, which deliver some type of frozen food product to basically every restaurant you used to love.
It’s cheaper (for them) but tastes worse. Eating out usually isn’t even worth it anymore.
Private Equity
We can’t bemoan food trends without pointing to an economic trend that’s causing some of the problems.
Private equity has been buying out our beloved chains (like Red Lobster, Pizza Hut, and Panera), destroying everything that made them good, and cashing out like bandits.
If your favorite chain went downhill in the last decade or so, private equity is probably to blame. We don’t understand how this is legal.
What Do You Think?
Do you agree that these popular food trends have worn out their welcome? What else would you add to the list?