In our opinion, the fashion statement of food, rather than the actual taste of a certain dish, is what makes a food overrated and trending. (By the way, writing the words “the fashion statement of food” bums us out so hard. Why can’t food just be something that we eat?)

Many of you should be ashamed.

Disagree? Oh yeah? Then why else would something as disgusting as pork belly become something that people “enjoy”?

Red velvet

“Red velvet” is often some dude’s shallow go-to line to try to impress a love interest with his pretend deep food palette. The uninformed sentiment is as tasteless as red-velvet cake, which is usually super-dry and a bit like eating recirculated airplane air.


Bacon

Bacon soap. Bacon perfume. Bacon-scented underwear. Bacon.

Please stop.

It will never make sense why a processed, super-salty meat that’s often impossible to cook just “right” became a fad that upchucked skin regimens and numerous books such as Bacon: A Love Story and Fifty Shades of Bacon.


Pork belly

Perhaps the definition of a restaurant-piloted trend food, pork belly is basically oversized bacon, but more like a sliver of meat that's attached to an undercooked fat lump that quivers like gelatin.

It’s cool to eat something horrible every once in a while, but it actually has to taste good.


Deep-dish pizza

While people are in Chicago, especially for the first time, destroying deep-dish pizza is often on the list. Skip it.

It often takes 30 to 40 minutes to make. To fill the uncomfortable gap of time, a couple of beers are usually tipped back, which exacerbates the forthcoming misery.

By the time the round-steel-panned pizza that’s inches deep arrives at the table, you’re starved. Before you know it, inches (inches!) of dough, mozzarella, possibly meats, a finishing layer of uncooked sauce and beer are just sitting there, in your stomach, as the ultimate gut bomb and the quintessential bummer.


Cupcakes

Like bacon, cupcakes are another circa-ten-years-ago overrated food, but the hype of sugar on top of sugar on top of more sugar lives on.



Lox

A killer filet of brined salmon with a homemade bagel is actually very underrated. It’s when a bagel and lox gets into the victimized status of sad, mass-produced rip-offs (e.g., in cafes and restaurants outside of New York City that don’t have a clue what they’re doing) that the dish is not only a sad intimidation but also just totally nosedive-into-the-pillow sad.


Ramen when it’s on something dumb, like a burger

What did designer ramen ever do to the geniuses who came up with the ramen burger, the ramen waffle sandwich, ramen shepherd’s pie and, of course, a ramen scramble with bacon?

Ramen rules. Not as a fried bun or some other hacked design, but when it’s homemade noodles prepared in a Japanese restaurant, served Sapporo-style or otherwise, in a soul-warming broth that’s adorned with seafood, ginger, scallions and spicy flakes.


Macarons

They’re like licking the floors of a sugar refinery, they’re much too pricey for something that can be eaten in one bite, and anything that looks as if it has been zapped with radioactive waves should be under suspicion.


Lobster

Called “bugs” and “sea roaches” in the industry, lobster, like the Portuguese bacalhau, was a peasant food that has been copied and “rebranded” as some sort of faux delicacy.

It’s good, but so is anything else that has been bathed in a butter trough. Likewise, a Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont lobster roll is awesome, but not for the $20, $25, $30 punch to the billfold.


Smoothies

Unless you’re making one at home and know exactly what goes into it, it’s better for you (and cheaper) to drink a gas-station soda versus knocking back an establishment-purchased smoothie in the name of so-called “healthy eating.”