Oh heyyyyyy, it’s a new year, and as per tradition over here, it’s time for the bore, my annual rant about played-out trends in our local culinary scene and annoying diner habits that really need to stop or get booted from the clerb. I’ve been writing the bore since 2007, so you can take a look at all my past gripes and kvetches and see how far we’ve come—or not. I usually keep things positive over here in hopperlandia, but this is my annual moment to have a heavy hand with the salt, so let’s get shakin’.
1. For number one, let’s kick things off with GLP-1 diner/dinner etiquette. I’m glad many of you out there are feelin’ good and lookin’ svelte, but if we’re friends going out to dinner together and you’re taking Ozempic or any other GLP-1s, I feel like you need to disclose this when we’re deciding where to go since you won’t be eating or drinking very much. Like, let’s skip the tasting menu or the dim sum feast and get sushi instead. Or, I’ll eat something before we go out and then we can have a few oysters and share a salad and have a glass of wine and call it a night. No shame, no judgement here! But it’s like dining with Tony Montana’s wife, Elvira—she just isn’t very hungry. Or going out with a vegan—I need to know these things before we open the menu at the old-school steakhouse on prime rib night.
2. Related: girl dinner. Restaurants, please don’t run that as a special or menu item. There are so many things wrong with it. Ewwwwww, David!
3. Odd plating. This is officially making me nuts: restaurants that serve appetizers with three portions/bites to two guests. I understand the visual appeal of odd numbers, but don’t make me Rochambeau with my date for the third oyster, or whatever impossible thing to share that has been served to us. (Unless, there’s a ghost at the table that I’m just not seeing. Or we’re having dim sum—three is for harmony and good fortune, and I will not mess with that.) I’m less mad at five portions for two people, because whoever enjoyed it most (or isn’t on Ozempic LOL) should get the bonus round.
Here’s a fun surcharge idea to help your bottom line: offer to up the portion for $X so our table is even-Steven and we don’t try to politely split or surrender the lone piece of crudo. Or just make it happen and tell your guests you spoiled them with the extra bite. Or sell items by the piece? So many diners go out in pairs, and there’s nothing like a four-top being told they need to order two of something because the dish is only portioned for three servings. Fix the food math please!
4. What is up with microgreens on everything? Chefs, I know you want to garnish the hell out of that plate and make it look fresh and cute, but I’m feeling like a baby rabbit. Give your cooks some other edible flourishes to play with. (I’m not asking for the return of the mint sprig and a halved strawberry on dessert, to be clearrrrr.)
Since I’m on a garnish rant: sliced cherry tomato on the plate, you make me feel like I’m at a spa resort in Arizona in 1994. It’s the vegetable equivalent of a squeeze bottle squiggle of balsamic vinegar. Leave it in the past.
5. I swear to Goddess, if I open one more takeout bag with the automatically included, plastic-wrapped cutlery pack inside, I’m going to stab someone in the eye with a spork. And, of course, it’s almost always a packet of non-compostable plastic utensils that will still be around 585 years from now. The worst! I’m getting takeout, so I’m obviously going somewhere with utensils, like my apartment. A delivery is going to someone’s address, where there is probably a kitchen with a silverware drawer (unless they just moved in). Trust, if we need utensils so we can eat some pasta salad in our car, we’ll tell you. Save your money, save the planet, MAKE IT STOP.
6. Nonconsensual scents. Hey, you. Yeah, the one at table seven who’s wafting like a love child of Pepé Le Pew and Pigpen from Peanuts—did you spritz yourself with every single perfume from your grandma’s vanity and then decide to traipse on over to a wine bar? I can barely detect the bouquet of my Champagne since it now smells like the perfume counter at Macy’s during the holidays, let alone enjoy my dinner in a cloud of aggressive femininity. When someone extra-redolent walks by in a restaurant, it’s the new crop dusting. Hold your breath! And guys, cool it on the heavy splash of cologne, this isn’t a Jean Naté After Bath Splash commercial casting. This is one case when more definitely isn’t more.
7. Speaking of scents that don’t make sense: I’m surprised by some of the scented soaps in restaurant bathrooms, like a sickly-sweet, floral hand wash I encountered recently (no, I don’t want my hands to smell like jasmine while I’m eating), and then there’s the omnipresent Aēsop hand wash (for like the past 10 years, yawn). I don’t want my paws to smell like anything except clean! Scent is so personal, and I’m actually allergic to eucalyptus, so I’m not a fan of many of the custom hippie hand washes—thanks for the rash.
And why the dreaded lotion in a fancy restaurant bathroom? I get so mad when it’s a dark washroom and I accidentally use the lotion instead of the soap. I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not a concubine, nor am I being held captive at the bottom of the well at Buffalo Bill’s hideout—I’m just a lady with a sensitive nose out for dinner who simply wants to wash her hands.
8. As for current décor trends, I say enough of the faux luxe furniture in velvet with brushed gold accents—restaurants and lounges are beginning to feel like a sorority girl’s first apartment entirely furnished by Wayfair. Since I’m at it: basta with all the beige, and let’s dial back the marble, ok? Save it for your sarcophagus. It’s beginning to feel like a mausoleum out there.
9. I can’t believe I have to write this, but if you’re hosting a tasting event featuring chefs and their restaurants, they better not all be cishet white male chefs. A publicist pitched me a food event last year and I said I wouldn’t cover it based on the homogenized, monochromatic lineup. Not a single woman was included, and there was just one brown chef. Are you kidding me? At another event, all I saw were tables helmed by white men with their big-name restaurants embroidered on their chef coats. How boring and tired. Representation matters. Try harder.
10. QR menus. AGAIN. I already called this out in 2023. There were plenty of other things I wanted to mention here, and I’ve never repeated anything on the bore, but for you, QR menus, I’m making an exception. It’s 2026, do not make me scan a tattered QR code that is hanging on for dear life while taped to the middle of the table or bar (but on your front window, fine!) so I can look at your menu.
The pandemic is OVAH. If I’m going out to drop my hard-earned cash on a cocktail and a pasta dish instead of making them at home, I really need to see a menu, because I am out! I’ll happily take a hideous laminated menu with scribbled price changes, or a stained paper menu, or a sticky binder (wipe that down, please), or a chalkboard I can barely read over a QR menu. Because this moment, right now, is about the return to hospitality and why we dine out, and nothing distances you from your guest like giving them yet another reason to be on their phone. It’s such a buzzkill of a first impression. The limpest, clammiest handshake. We want a hug!
Is there something I missed? Do you feel like bitching, too? Go ahead and email me. But first, you should read past issues of the bore to catch up on my previous kvetches, like tinned fish and caviar everything and bad table lights.
As for how expensive it is to dine out right now, I hear you, but I don’t want to hear it! Yes, SF is insane and many of us can’t eat out like we used to. Do what you can (and treat yoself sometimes), stop ordering delivery, and support your neighborhood restaurant.
