Ask the Critic: Worst. Idea. Ever.

Want to know why food is a great beat? Because there's always someone out there who's gonna think of jamming a full serving of pasta primavera into a waffle cone and selling it on the street (as pictured above). Usually, these people are going to be coming from a place...

By Jason Sheehan

December 14, 2009

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Want to know why food is a great beat? Because there's always someone out there who's gonna think of jamming a full serving of pasta primavera into a waffle cone and selling it on the street (as pictured above). Usually, these people are going to be coming from a place to which neither the waffle cone nor pasta primavera is native (Korea, in this case), and will therefore miss out on the powerful socio-cultural revulsion that such an idea might spark in someone who grew up with either of those two things in their lives.

Yes, food is also a great beat to cover because so many good things happen in the food world, with great restaurants and interesting chefs and brilliant leaps of faith made by cooks committed to doing things their way.

But for every Thomas Keller, Dan Barber, Grant Achatz or Steve Ells out there, there are a hundred guys trying to get their Balinese fusion taco restaurants off the ground, a hundred kooks in a hundred basements trying to make food pills in advance of the coming zombie apocalypse, a hundred guys who think it's a wonderful idea to shove spaghetti primavera (or chicken alfredo or steak) in a waffle cone and sell it to unsuspecting businessmen (or curious tourists) in Myeongdong.

This week's question? What's the worst food idea you've heard over the past ten years? I'm giving bonus points for links to pictures of said foods. Double-bonus points for stories of personal experiences with same.

I'm in the process of putting together a list of the decade's worst trends/fads in the food world for this here blog, but in the process of researching larger trends, I found so many individual examples of bad single ideas that I felt I just had to share. Please to enjoy...

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