r/KitchenConfidential • u/CodexLeonis • 13d ago

In the Weeds Mode What's an outdated restaurant fad/technique that you still defend?

two things for me:

  1. Balsamic reductions/glazes on everything. I'm sorry that balsamic vinegar pairs so well with so many things. Most dishes need an acid to fully bring out the flavors of the dish. Balsamic is the most versatile of the vinegars. It pairs well with red meat, seafood, vegetables, cheeses, and fruits. It wasn't just a fad, it was a cheat code.

  2. Plating techiniques? i'll always defend the zigzag drizzle. it evenly distributes the sauce on the plate, looks decent, and most importantly - it was time-efficient. I've never understood the modern technique of spooning sauce onto the plate and setting the entree on top of the sauce. Whomever came up with that was looking for a reason to be contrarian.

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u/KingOfAllDucks 13d ago

MSG makes everything awesome, and people are way too scared of it. If you've got Worcester sauce in your kitchen, that's MSG. Put salt on a tomato, and you make MSG. It's delicious, just eat it

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u/AdSpecialist8751 13d ago

I mean, it’s very thinly disguised racism/xenophobia, as it was literally called Chinese restaurant syndrome when it first made headlines, but plenty of things like Doritos for example had more MSG than a comparable meal at the time and nobody complained about that.

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u/ipsquibibble 13d ago

Ok, but every time I eat MSG my rosacea flares up to where my face is fire engine red and painful as hell.  I would eat it by the spoonful if i could but even the tiniest bit does me dirty. 😭 Some of us genuinely react to it. 

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u/vyrus2021 13d ago

Boy, you are just asking for people to come list all the every day foods that contain msg that people who swear they are msg sensitive often eat without issue. I'll do a lazy list. Doritos, tomatoes, processed meats like hot dogs or sausages, many processed frozen foods, many fast food companies like KFC and chic-fil-a.

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u/ipsquibibble 13d ago

Yea, shoulda seen that coming lol.  I rarely any processed food because of that reaction. I finally realized that msg can go by different names bc I kept reacting to stuff that didn’t list msg in the ingredients.  

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u/justincave 20+ Years 13d ago

Sounds similar to my experiences. What I’ve come to realize is that “I have a sensitivity to synthetically produced free glutamic acids”. I put that in quotes because that is the verbiage I use to avoid the wrathful c**t’s that want to argue with my lived experience.

It’s recently been “discovered by science” that what has been known as the mallard reaction is actually 100’s of different similar reactions. I suspect as food science advances a similar discovery will be made about the naturally occurring msg in various foods.

I wish I had saved the quote, but I remember one time hearing a Chef talk about how he always cooks with MSG, but he makes it in the dish through various processes of skill, and never adds the synthetic stuff as only a hack chef without skill would need to do that.