Seasonal Menus Do-Over
Nov 12, 2007 general food
As seen on a St. Louis menu:
Seasonal Cuisine at its finest, California figs and Parma ham with a drizzle of aged Balsamic of Modena
Somewhere along the way it seems the word seasonal was stripped of its meaning.
More than anyone, I seem to have lost my Mom with that one. “Why the picture of the toilet?” she asked. Because that’s precisely where these seasonal menus need to go.
Seasonal has become just another trendy term to include on menus like organic or free range, and it’s another in the long list of words that have all but lost their meaning do to advertising. Just because a piece of meat is organic doesn’t make it free range, just because it’s free range doesn’t make it organic, and as others have said long before me, just because “everything is in season somewhere” doesn’t mean it’s in season for St. Louis.
That dish above has something from California and two things from Italy. How that makes it “seasonal cuisine at its finest” in St. Louis I am unsure.
Is it unfair of me to assume that a restaurant referencing seasonality might be referring to what’s in season where they’re actually doing business? I wouldn’t think so. In fact, I think that’s what most of us probably think of when we see the word seasonal.
But apparently, because right now it’s Spring in Australia, and they’re right in the heart of their asparagus season which runs until about December from what I gather, we can get some Australian asparagus and call it “seasonal cuisine.”
Whatever.
Tags: bs, menu-twisting
