The current restaurant trend is tapas. For those of you who don’t dine out much at “nice” places, American-style tapas involves a bunch of small dishes of mostly quasi-Mediterranean “fusion” food ordered a la carte, which are sampled by everyone at the table “family style.”
Pah.
I don’t pay good money to have to pass a bunch of stupid little dishes filled with pretentious food I don’t understand around a table. Tapas can return to whatever culinary fad hole it crawled out of as far as I am concerned.
This rant is inspired by two recent events, my reading of this Dec. 5, New York Times article and my going to a Japanese “japas” restaurant with some relatives on roughly the same day. (I name no names to protect the innocent and guilty both.) I’d been to the restaurant a few years ago and liked it quite a bit, but the menu had changed from being more traditional Japanese restaurant, which always had a fair bit of a la carte on the sushi menu, of course, to “japas.” There were no entrees at all, just a long list of small dishes mostly priced between $3 and $8, with a few over that. No clue as to what they were, no clue as to what goes with what, how big anything is, and so on. The waiter was a useless ‘tard (both kinds). Now I’m not especially fond of Japanese food but can usually find something decent on the menu, for instance one of the Japanese adaptations to please the Western palate, shrimp tempura. There was a shrimp dish (“sweet shrimp”) which I ordered hoping that it was shrimp tempura… when the plate showed up with small shrimp in the shell with heads still on I realized the answer was a resounding no. Sure they were breaded and fried but definitely not shrimp tempura and definitely not satisfying either. I ended up ordering something else which was OK… but of course added to the bill, which added to my dissatisfaction. More on that below.
Basically, the whole phenomenon is just an upscale reinvention of an old American classic: the buffet. The big difference is that at a buffet, all your choices (as incoherent they may be) are laid out in front of you and are usually pretty simple stuff like mac ‘n’ cheese, steamed vegetables, overcooked roast beef, etc. With tapas, you’re sitting down at your table facing a menu with a blizzard of dishes. Some are straightforward, such as mixed olives or bread and olive oil, but most suffer with vague, pretentious fusion cuisine titles like:
- “Roasted beets with goat cheese vinaigrette”
- “Hazelnut-crusted wilted arugula with maple goat cheese vinaigrette”
- “Rabbit with wilted arugula, goat cheese and nuts”
- “Watermelon goat cheese salad with citrus vinagrette”
- “Wild bighorn sheep sausage with blueberry mustard goat cheese vinaigrette.”
Goat cheese and vinagrette for EVERYONE! The standard tapas menu is the culinary equivalent of “feature vomit.” Given the questionable edibility of most fusion cuisine, it’s none too far from being the actual, honest-to-goodness kind, too, especially after one’s third Grey Goose appletini in two hours, coupled with those cigarettes “smoked only on weekends.” Unsurprisingly, the Spanish—inventors of tapas—practice it more sensibly. Basically, it’s bar food, something Americans aren’t exactly ignorant of. That’s right, tapas is just the Spanish version of buffalo wings, peanuts, fries, etc., except it’s olives, bread with toppings, etc., which restaurateurs in the US have convinced the public should cost a bundle. And who ever thought bar food was a good deal? 😉
Diners are, as the New York Times article linked above, supposed to like this because of Americans’ desire for more choice, whether we need it or not. As far as I’m concerned, tapas is just another way to fleece me out of my hard-earned money while making me agonize over picking a meal, but I’m one of those seemingly relatively rare people who hates shopping, and tapas brings all the joy of accessorizing to the dinner table. Behavioral economics tells us that, from the standpoint of the retailer, tapas makes sense: Many small transactions are more easily overlooked than larger ones and it’s easier to get diners to spend more thereby. Of course my discontent is also understandable—too many choices and too many transactions can be disconcerting. If you want a nice short introduction, look at Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz‘s little book The Paradox of Choice, which explains quite nicely why more choice isn’t always better for our own well-being. (Read this review for a short course.) In a nutshell, each choice we have to make involves cognitive effort on our part, and a comparison with all the other choices we could have made but ended up rejecting. All this comparison is tiring and opportunity cost is a stone-cold bee-otch, if you’re aware of it. Schwartz characterizes two basic ideal-type cognitive styles: maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers carefully compare their options. Satisficers, by constrast, are willing to settle for “good enough” and move on. Evidently I am a “maximizer” when it comes to meals at good restaurants… and, at least according to Schwartz, maximizers are unlikely to be happy about what they get because they spend more time comparing their options, paying attention to opportunity costs, and so on. Tapas is, therefore, pretty much guaranteed to piss me off. (I’m better at satisficing in other choices, fortunately.) I admit a lot of this is my descent to fogey-ism. I don’t like the “mix tape on steroids” that is the modern Ipod playlist and I never play albums on shuffle either. I hate surprise parties. I have a decidedly unfashionable desire for a coherent whole, be it an album or a meal, and tapas (of whatever variety) doesn’t deliver it for me. The fact that it’s a way to run up the tab just nails it.
The only good tapas experience I’ve ever had was a few years back in Minneapolis. The restaurant was not my choice, but I was with friends…. The waitress had the sense to suggest that we “course” the meal and let the kitchen take over. She asked us for a basic list of our preferences and went back to the kitchen. So “choice”—if you want to have a good experience, anyway—is an illusion, too.
Aside: You may notice the “fascism” tag. I have decided—out of deference to Angry Midwesterner—to tag all my rants with “fascism” from here on out. I give it a fig leaf of justification with Spain’s experience under the dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the man about whom Adolf Hitler said “I would rather spend two hours in the dentist’s chair than have another meeting with him.” Franco would have enjoyed tapas. So there. 😛
December 19, 2007 at 5:39 pm
It’s like all the good food in life.
The original way of doing it was the best especially if it has survived intact for hundreds/thousands of years.
Dim Sun is a great example, you don’t order from a menu you check out the little trollys full of goodies that are wheeled around and grab the one you like the look of.
Sushi on those wacky little conveyor belts is equally as cool too. Mezes is the same as tapas but Greek, looks like all the best bar food comes from countries who like their military to be in charge occasionally.
It’s good cos it’s cheap and you don’t have to wait too long for the next one to come along if the one you are presently consuming is not to you taste.
Unfortunately eating with you hands adds no value and if their is no goat’s cheese drizzle/ coulis how is Nigel(la) going to justify their 4 years at cook school.
December 19, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Wow that food fad really got to you huh?
I shy away from anyplace thats going to charge me more than $10 for a belly full… guess I am a classless slob 🙂
December 19, 2007 at 8:13 pm
TRM wrote:
###Wow that food fad really got to you huh?###
We’re full of bile here at AMB….
###I shy away from anyplace thats going to charge me more than $10 for a belly full… guess I am a classless slob ###
Well I do like a good meal now and again and am willing to pay for it. $50 is probably my limit but it wasn’t too terribly long ago that it was lower—income shifts alter one’s price points. Nonetheless, if I can get good food for less money, of course I go for that.
DC says:
###It’s like all the good food in life.
The original way of doing it was the best especially if it has survived intact for hundreds/thousands of years.###
Yeah, I’m pretty reactionary when it comes to food too. I bet “old style” tapas ain’t bad… for what it is, bar food. I like Mediterranean food quite a bit. I’m too neurotic to enjoy dim sum because the ingredients are too… unpredictable, and not in a good way. (Chicken feet? WTF? It goes down from there….)
December 21, 2007 at 10:48 pm
There’s a tapas joint in the Rice University vicinity in Houston; a “few and far between” kind of place, but good and reasonably priced. Like an every-other-anniversary-restaurant. Helped along, of course, by an abundance of spirits.
I think places like that, however, are a symptom of increasing multiculturalism: whereas “foreign” food used to be a niche-specialty item (think chinese restaurants in the 70s), now these things area hallmark of the cultural elite, with all the attendant pretention that one would expect.
December 25, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Brian wrote:
###Now these things area hallmark of the cultural elite, with all the attendant pretention that one would expect.###
Sigh, you are right. Elites and their associated hangers-on (who tend to be worse, IMO)….
My favorite Asian cuisine restaurant is a not-very-impressive noodle shop. Why? The food is damn good, explained if you need it in the proprietor’s broken English, made the way you want it, and the price is right. The Chinese restaurant across the street from my house is also pretty good, for the same reasons. I’ve been to a few “better” ones but all too often the food isn’t better than what you get at a boring old lunch counter for a third the price.
I guess “ambiance” isn’t worth a lot to me. 🙂