Get real or get out of the kitchen

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.

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.

In fairness to restaurant chefs, they are not alone. I sat down in front of the telly the other night and was bombarded by TV chefs, all cooking in a style and with ingredients that in real life are now only used or brought out on the rarest of occasions.

People don’t cook in gallons of oil, pounds of sugar and with blocks of butter. It makes you wander if there are actually two roads: us lot in our kitchens, grilling, cutting off the rind and using as little oil as possible; and chefs with their heart-harming friends, butter, sugar and oil.

Ultimately where does this lead? I’ll tell you: marginalisation. People eating out only when they think they have earned enough ‘calorie-credits’ to indulge in the old school.

I know I do this, and a huge number of my friends do too. Lets face it, we are all pretty decent cooks nowadays; you have to be. Cooking is like skiing or golf in that socially, you have to know how to do it to some extent.

And because we can cook, our standards have jumped and expectations leaped. Again, going back to my eating-at-home theory, perhaps the real reason for this is because our taste buds have changed and we are disassociating ourselves from the fancy, fat-laden foods that lurk in every restaurant and every chef’s repertoire.

Is it time for the chefs to go back to school — or do they really need to come home with us?

We could show them what we cook and the ingredients we use and avoid. They could then look at each dish and improve them — not by adding a butter-based sauce or whatever, but by introducing clever flavour partners.

I’ll give you an example: sugar snaps in our house were never, shall we say, the first to be finished. That is until a chef friend suggested a few shavings of chorizo sausage mixed in with the vegetables. Stunning!

And this is it: chefs do know how to cook like us — and in lots of cases much better — but they seemingly choose to ignore this ingredient revolution on every level; in news print, in restaurants, on television. Everywhere.

Take stock next time you’re cooking or dining out. Compare your own cooking style and ingredients to what you see from most TV and restaurant chefs. I promise, the difference will stagger you.

We may be doing all we can to reduce the sugar, salt, sodium and fat in our meals — but beware: it’s highly likely that your local restaurant is in fact doing all it can to block your arteries.

Aidan Keane is the founder of specialist leisure and retail design firm Keane; for more information, visit: www.keanebrands.com