Trending
Lotje Deelman was editor-in-chief of ELLE Eten, has been working for Allerhande for almost 15 years and worked behind the scenes on television programmes such as MasterChef, de Worsten van Babel On Tour and De Nieuwe Lekkerbek. She ate pig’s trotters with Anthony Bourdain and flirted with Gordon Ramsay in his Aston Martin. Lotje is the (co-)author of more than ten cookbooks and, in her kitchen in the Drenthe countryside, is never too reluctant to set something on fire. On FavorFlav, Lotje shares what keeps her busy every week. This time: Lotje takes a look at trends.
“It’s a bit blogger,” says the boy who works in my favourite vintage shop and looks a little like a very young Bob Dylan. Brash, with a sweet face. He has hit the nail on the head, and I quickly take off the hat I was looking at doubtfully in the mirror, not yet quite sure what was wrong with it. Exactly. That hat is a bit blogger, and you don’t want that when you’re me, appearance-wise. Or philosophy-of-life-wise. Bloggers are trendy, and trendy is stupid.
Cauliflower pizza
Okay, miss little cookie, so trends are stupid. So you should really only make guacamole with avocado, and not soup, mayonnaise or omelettes? Correct. And those apple roses on Instagram a while ago were all undercooked? Indeed. And courgette spaghetti and cauliflower pizza are an insult to every Italian, and goji berries and chia seeds to your intelligence? Absolutely.
Skulls and choppers
But you’re not even a little bit happy that in Groningen, where you now go quite often since you impulsively moved to Drenthe (definitely not a trend, by the way; you rarely see anyone there under seventy and without a short, sassy haircut), you can now also eat poké bowls and wood-fired pizzas? So you’ve always had four colours of Sriracha in your fridge? So it doesn’t bother you at all that Ottolenghi has turned pomegranate seeds and black garlic into cookbook ingredients at Albert Heijn? And those tattoos of food and skulls and choppers and knives and so on—you surely invented those entirely by yourself? Yeah right.
Snot
Sometimes a trend turns out not to be a trend at all, but you only think it is. A little shaken by all the aggressive reviews of my BFF Herman’s new restaurant, I started googling. What an incredibly useful trend that is, by the way: googling. Did reviewers in the past also just wildly speculate out loud about chefs’ fat bank accounts, the servers’ deranged thoughts, the exorbitant price of the other guests’ watches, and describe dishes as cat vomit and snot, alongside the toilet brush? No, surely not? A review isn’t bloody a column, is it?
Assassination attempt
What do you know? This time I can’t blame the millennials. The review with which Johannes van Dam, Amsterdam’s most famous reviewer (in the past—he’s dead now, just so the millennials know), established his reputation in the early nineties of the last century had the screaming headline: ‘Assassination attempt?’ Oops… That chef was immediately fired and the restaurant closed straight away. Because of that one review, you see. Reviewers’ venom is therefore clearly not a trend. I find that a little comforting. When it comes to something that has always existed (rain, traffic jams, abuse of power, iceberg lettuce), you don’t have to worry quite so much.
Condoms
Okay, then. So trends are actually okay. Some of them. Barbecue restaurants: fine. Condoms with the bill don’t necessarily need to become a trend in my opinion (true story, last night, right here in Rotterdam; this is a column, so there). Selfieccinos (for the non-millennials: that’s a selfie with your cappuccino) may die a quick but painful death as far as I’m concerned. Just like capsule hotels. Vegan meringues can stay, as can pulled pork and Buddha bowls. The old days weren’t better in every way. Except Bob Dylan. He was. Better than everyone.
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