be surprised if restaurants started making their own - just like they make burrata, or butter.
Tyne's smoked chease, a customer favourite
While resellers include health food shops and the controversial Fauxmagerie in Brixton Village Market – against whom Dairy UK could take legal action for allegedly misleading customers - it is increasingly stocked by restaurants, cafes and dairy cheese mongers, too.
As for plant-based meat substitutes, Alan said, some have more merit than others.
“I don’t agree with vegan sausages and vegan burgers. In the eighties, we called it a bean burger.”
Vegetarian burgers have come a long way since; we now have the Impossible Burger, which actually bleeds and has been endorsed by chefs Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck and David Myers.
But for Alan, this doesn't make any sense.
He said: “Why would any self-respecting vegetarian or vegan want to experience what a meat eater’s having when they’ve built their whole internal culinary ethos against it?”
“Vegan burgers with beetroot juice for blood, what the hell is the point of that? It’s like turkey bacon, what the fuck is turkey bacon?”
Bleedin beetroot burgers. Photo credit: @lassenielsen
Author and chef Jo Pratt said that from a restaurant point of view, trying to keep up with food trends can be frustrating.
"You think to yourself ‘well hold on, what’s the next thing going to be.’”
Increasingly, she said, it’s what about what’s on the plate, but what’s been removed, and this affects the way food looks and tastes – and not always for the better.
But for Alan, it's a no brainer: if the customer wants it, there’s money to be made.
He said it’s important to be flexible instead of adopting the derisory “what the fuck now have we got to do now” attitude, because it gets to the point that waiting staff are afraid to ask the kitchen to adapt their food, and that’s money lost.
Plus, it has become increasingly difficult for chefs to get work if they can’t adapt, and older chefs should take a leaf from young chefs' book. He named Killarney chef Chad Byrne, who became vegan for a month to "see things from the other side."
And rather than inhibit the chef's creativity, he said, it encouraged it.
“As we all know, this is the one job we have, there’s no stopgap, there’s no point where you go ‘okay, I know it all.’ You don’t, you never will.”
What are your thoughts? Do you think food trends are a good way of trying out new things, or are you a die hard traditionalist? Answer in the comments below, or join us on Facebook or Twitter to continue the debate.
