In the interest of balance and because I know people love to read about the negative, here’s a lighthearted stream of mild invective to end the blogging year. If you read other food blogs, you would think it was incredibly hard to write openly and honestly about bad food experiences. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s my firm belief that if you don’t have anything nice to say about bad dining then you should say it or it’ll stay bad. In the sea goes this lot…

Bad BBQ

When done right BBQ is up there with the best food you can eat. Slow smoked meat is imbued with sweet subtle smokiness gently creating a bark of spice covering juicy meat. A balance of salty, sweet and savoury. It is not some slow roasted meat smothered in sickly sweet sauce with fake smoke flavour. The bar is set so low, the expectations and experiences of real BBQ food is so scant that it’s easy to deceive punters into thinking they are eating the real thing by just installing American diner cliches and pickle-backs in your restaurant. Birmingham, take your pick from several candidates.

Bad Sushi

Does your sushi chef actually start by choosing whole fish, cleaning it, preparing and if necessary curing and aging it? If not what does he or she actually do? If all they do is take a vacpacked fillet of salmon/tuna/yellowtail and smash it into various forms then you might as well eat at Yo! Sushi because you are deluding yourself that there is actually a difference in quality.

Micro-herbs and other plating memes

A visual crutch for unimaginative cooks. I am deeply suspicious of micro-herbs. Some micro-coriander on your taco, really? I would rather you made your own fresh corn tortilla. That would show you really know and cared about what you were doing.

Micro-amaranth on eggs benedict should go the way of dragged quenelles and painted on reductions. Don’t get me started on rolled tubes that make a tiny strip of vegetable look bite sized. Or a single spear of asparagus split into three, obviously more profitable than serving three spears of asparagus. Don’t.

EPIC food

Did you journey by foot to Inner Mongolia to bring back the yak butter used in your triple bacon cheeseburger?

No? Then STFU, it is not epic. It’s just a big burger.

Head-cheese and sperm-sac

English speaking people mangling the language by using the term head-cheese for brawn. I’m not a linguistic conservationist but to directly transliterate the French “fromage de tete” when we have a perfectly good word for it is like saying four-twenties instead of eighty.

Head-cheese and sperm-sac have connotations of macho adventure-eating. Doesn’t it sound more edgy when you eat cod sperm-sac simmered in dashi? Milt just doesn’t cut it. I blame Munchies.

Any others?

Got anymore bodies to dump in the sea? Let me know! Maybe you’d like to tie an anvil to food bloggers…