the electric internet

But the bigger issue is that chefs are coming up with specials and pushing trends before truly understanding the product, because they don’t have to. The novelty sells itself.
It’s a disservice to the product and the eating public. I’m sure Mario Batali knows exactly what to do with cannolicchi (razor clam) and ditto for April Bloomfield with Mangalitsa, but they aren’t the problem. It’s the copycats, it’s the people who are expressly selling the “trend.” They produce cheap knockoff interpretations or, worse yet, drop razor clams on some stupid farm-to-Brooklyn-to-table restaurant that thinks cooking simply involves buying a new locally sourced ingredient and putting some pink sea salt on it. There’s no craft. (“Just taste the simplicity, the essence, the natural flavor!” No, asshole, COOK it.)
You know what happens when you sell trends? You sell crap. I’ve been guilty of this myself. People wanted Cheeto fried chicken from reading my blog, a lot of people were mashing up Asian/Down-Home American, so I got caught up in a trend and introduced some crappy items at [my now-closed restaurant] Xiao Ye. I didn’t intentionally sell garbage; they were just crappy because I didn’t take the time to really understand what I was trying to do. It happens. No one’s perfect. Live and learn.