Get real or get out of the kitchen

Chefs need to get in tough with the tastes of today's consumers.

Today’s chefs have lost touch with public eating habits — it’s about time they looked at what’s cooking in our kitchens at home, says Aidan Keane.

As a designer of restaurants, and with studios in Dubai, the UK and Australia, I get to see a hell of a lot of food operations — some so good you want to tell the world and others decidedly average.

I also get to see trends as they rise like a rocket — and indeed fall like a stone.

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Now what I want to talk about this month has nothing directly to do with design; it’s more a worrying trend that I see increasingly across the restaurant world, one that will do more to destroy a business than the ropiest of interiors.

Before I go any further, it is important for you to know that I am extremely happy to indulge myself in a bit of forbidden pleasure.

Indulging, is something I am quite good at. In fact, on a scale of 1to10, I am definitely a sure-fire 21, and certainly a leader rather than a follower.
 

It’s important you understand this, because what I am about to say should be put into some sort of context. In short, I am saying if you give me a chance to enjoy life, I will bite your proverbial arm off.

However there is one area of indulgence that I am sick to death of, and that is chefs trying to kill us all off with rich ingredients — ingredients that are quite frankly no longer welcome at most of the tables I sit at.

This is why I say that chefs should whip off their whites, step out of the kitchen and take a long, hard look at what people are actually eating nowadays.

There has been a steady shift in preference toward simple food over the past couple of years and I do believe that this style, although started in the domestic kitchen, has spread to affect our expectations of places where we eat out.

In short, I believe the taste buds have adapted — and the rich ingredients I talked about earlier seem to have fallen foul of the times.