Get real or get out of the kitchen

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

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.

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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