No More in 2008

1. I love pork as much as the next guy, but all this pork belly nonsense is getting out of hand (and getting us fat).
2. I am so stanca (tired/fatiguée) of panna cotta and its rainbow of flavors. It’s like last year’s crème brûlée, and the cavalcade of bread pudding before that. Can I just have some pie?
3. 35 wines by the glass, that’s great, but do they have to average $12 each? Jeez. I’m back on the bottle.
4. Since we’re on wine, what is up with all the wine bars opening? It’s becoming a joke. We have a wine bar in each neighborhood, I think we can stop now. Well, unless yours is going to be really cool and you’ll serve killer wines in correct stemware and at the right temperature. (And pizzerias are coming up close on wine bars’ heels. We’ll be seeing them on this list in 2009, mark my words.)
5. Ok, this has become my biggest pet peeve: servers and bussers who say, “You still working on that?” What am I, a hyena gnawing off the last shreds of meat on a wildebeest thighbone? That phrase needs to be banished from restaurant lexicon. Be the change.
6. Hey, I dig salts. It’s why I have at least ten at home I like to play with. But offering four kinds on the table to sprinkle on your buttered bread, or listing them as an ingredient in certain dishes is, uh, trying too hard.
7. Why are open kitchens continuing to be a “hot” design trend? They are noisy, and there’s a lot I don’t need to watch (or see, yikes, you did not just drop that towel on the floor and then pick it up and use it again?). Unless it’s a gorg kitchen like, say, Myth’s. Perhaps bacar started a trend by covering theirs up.
8. Another thing cropping up in restaurants that pains me is flat screen TVs. Unless you’re a sports bar, I think they are ugly, distracting, and playing art house films doesn’t really constitute good décor.
9. Saketinis and nasty soju cocktails are usually so wrong. I’m sorry you don’t have a liquor license, but do you really need to create a list of eight saketinis, and for $9 each? Just do some good Champagne cocktails instead—and they taste a hell of a lot better.
10. It’s gotta be said (and it breaks my meat-loving heart), but salumi has become a runaway train. Some people know what they’re doing, but many of these entry-level efforts need to stay home. Just because the meat didn’t rot doesn’t make that coppa a success, and let’s not even talk about the fact you’re selling it off at $14 a plate.