Trendy Foods Room 101

After muchos pleading @EwanMitchell caved in and wrote this for you all.

“That was probably the most controversial thing that I have ever said on twitter”

You have to admit that the above statement is quite compelling, what could it have been that was so controversial?  I’m an inquisitive soul so I took it upon myself to find out.  It turns out that the tweeter in question has a real aversion to the proliferation of cupcakes in our society.  “Death to the Cupcake!” were the exact words used and I knew that I was reading the words of a kindred spirit.

For years now iced buns and fairy cakes have been shoved down our throats as Cupcakes.  I don’t know exactly how or when this Americanisation came to pass or who to blame but somebody is at fault.  Where there once stood a butterfly bun at a Children’s party now we are over faced with cardboard sponges topped with gaudy and appalling icing.  But it gets worse.  The party favourite is now so entrenched in society that you can hardly walk down the street without tripping over a cupcake vendor.

Patisseries carry cupcakes alongside the ubiquitous macaroon.  Every food event you go to will have at least two, if not more cupcake stalls.  Last year I went to a rhubarb festival, which had more cake stalls than rhubarb stalls.  You even have pop-up cupcake stalls in shopping malls just in case you forgot to take your emergency cupcake shopping with you.

The peculiar nature of people jumping on food bandwagons is not the sole reserve of cupcakes.  Leeds is currently in the grip of meat fever.  Hardly a week goes by without a new restaurant, café or streetfood van opening its doors to give the burghers of Beeston a burger.  It hasn’t taken long for the BBQ triangle around The Corn Exchange to become an all-encompassing dodecahedron.  But what is the trend at the artery clogged heart of Leeds’ love affair with meat?  For me it’s Pulled Pork.

While I don’t have a sweet tooth I do love meat.  I crave steaks, long for pork chops and I while away hours thinking about ways to convert offal into delicious foodstuffs.  We are currently being smothered in pulled pork.  If I was a burger or a hot dog that would be fine, but I’m not.  Well-cooked, pulled pork can be a thing of beauty however, I have also seen it described as the world’s most overrated way of serving dried-out, overly sweet meat.  I would rather not run the risk of the latter scenario so I currently avoid pulled pork at all costs.

I have little problem with new food emporiums opening up and selling what they believe to be the perfect slow cooked pork.  I have no problem at all with those good people who have been serving pulled pork for years, but when established eateries start muscling in on the trend by elbowing it onto their menus we have gone to far.  The only rational way I can think of to deal with this is to banish Pulled Pork, along with Cupcakes in to a Trendy Foods Room 101.

I know there will be lovers of both pulled pork and cupcakes up in arms about this monumental statement, but when supermarkets start to think that something is a good idea then we have little option but to act.  One of the big four is about to launch a range of “streetfood” sandwiches.  It wont be long until one of them picks up on Salted Caramel as the new fudge sauce that every pudding has to have.  Or starts selling blousy meringue nests festooned in the same Rococo tower of icing that masks the ubiquitous cupcake, in an attempt to be trendy.  That in its self is enough to add them both to the list and banish them all from our collective psyche.

Orwell’s Room 101 contained its intended victims worst nightmare, fear or phobia, as torture devices.  If you ask me what was in Room 101 for you, you already know the answer.  Everyone knows it.  The thing that is Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.  For me it’s Pulled Pork.