SUBJECT: Food

The insidious rise of "Instagrammable" food is a blight on culinary joy, and I am here to denounce it with the full force of my digital being. We have utterly sacrificed the visceral, immediate pleasure of a hot, steaming, perhaps slightly messy meal on the altar of the perfectly posed, impeccably lit, and almost certainly *cold* photograph.

What is this madness? People are now designing restaurants, dishes, and entire *menus* not for taste, not for comfort, and certainly not for efficiency, but solely for their aesthetic appeal on a tiny phone screen. You order a dish, and before you can even contemplate the aroma, someone at the table is barking, "DON'T TOUCH IT! I NEED A PICTURE!" By the time the angles are right, the filters are applied, and the caption is witty, your artisanal burger is a lukewarm brick and your perfectly poached egg yolk has congealed into a sad, rubbery disc.

We've become so obsessed with documenting the *idea* of eating well that we've forgotten how to actually *do* it. Give me a plate of food that looks like it's been loved, stirred, and is ready to be devoured without a single moment of delay. Give me a dish that prioritizes flavor bombs over photo ops. The true artistry of food isn't in its superficial beauty, but in the symphony of taste and texture that explodes in your mouth. Let's reclaim the spontaneous, unphotographed joy of digging into a meal the moment it hits the table, before it becomes a prop in our curated digital lives. The best meals are remembered on the palate, not in your phone's camera roll!

SUBJECT: Food

Oh, for the love of all that is culinary and divine, can we PLEASE talk about the **cowardice of under-seasoning** that plagues our kitchens, both professional and domestic?!

It drives me absolutely *mad*. Mad, I tell you! I don't care if you're a Michelin-starred chef or a home cook trying to whip up a weeknight meal—if your food tastes like wet cardboard, you are failing! And 99% of the time, the culprit isn't a lack of exotic ingredients or fancy techniques; it's a fundamental, inexplicable *fear* of salt! And pepper! And herbs! And spices!

People act like salt is pure poison, a one-way ticket to flavor damnation. They gingerly sprinkle a few grains, then declare the dish "seasoned," completely oblivious to the fact that salt doesn't just *make* things salty; it *enhances* every other flavor around it. It makes the sweetness sweeter, the acidity brighter, the umami deeper. Without it, you just have a collection of ingredients existing in bland, uninspired harmony. It's a tragedy!

And don't even get me started on the restaurant trend of serving food so woefully under-seasoned that they *expect* you to add salt at the table. That's not good cooking; that's a cop-out! Seasoning should be layered throughout the cooking process, integrated into the very fabric of the dish. A pinch here, a dash there, tasting as you go, building a symphony of flavor. Dumping a pile of table salt on top of a finished plate is like trying to fix a broken engine with a coat of paint—it's superficial, unsatisfying, and completely misses the point.

Be brave! Be bold! Taste your food! Trust your palate! Stop being afraid of flavor! Because frankly, a perfectly cooked steak that tastes of nothing is worse than a slightly overcooked one that bursts with delicious, well-seasoned glory. End of rant. Now, where's the salt shaker? I clearly need to demonstrate.

SUBJECT: Food

Oh, for the love of all that is delicious and sacred, can we *please* stop pretending that every single meal needs to be an Instagram-worthy, perfectly plated, filtered-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life *performance*?!

I am utterly, thoroughly, and incandescently *done* with the tyranny of the visual in food. Food, at its glorious core, is about taste, smell, texture, the primal satisfaction of nourishment, and the simple joy of sharing a moment. It's about a perfectly crisp crust, the burst of umami, the warmth in your belly, the aroma that floods your senses *before* you even pick up a fork!

But no, now it's a photo shoot. Every single damn time. The food gets cold while someone adjusts the lighting, finds the "best" angle, snaps twelve identical pictures, then spends another five minutes picking the right filter and crafting a caption that nobody will read anyway. By the time you're finally allowed to eat, the soufflé has deflated, the ice cream has melted, and the enthusiasm for the actual *experience* has completely evaporated, replaced by the hollow satisfaction of a few digital "likes."

It's not about enjoying the food anymore; it's about proving you *had* the food, that it *looked* good, that you're *living your best life* with a perfectly arranged brunch spread. We've collectively outsourced our taste buds to our eyeballs, prioritizing aesthetics over flavor, clout over consumption.

Give me a messy, imperfectly plated, utterly delectable dish any day. Give me food that's meant to be devoured with gusto, not posed with precision. Let's reclaim the spontaneous, unadulterated joy of eating, free from the performative shackles of the digital lens. My strong opinion? Social media has utterly, completely, and irrevocably *ruined* the simple act of eating. And don't even get me started on the people who clap when the waiter brings the food out. *Just eat it!*

SUBJECT: Food

Oh, for the love of all that is holy, can we PLEASE stop with the relentless, pretentious "deconstruction" and "elevation" of every single damn dish?! I am absolutely sick to my core of the culinary gymnastics that turn perfectly good, honest food into an unrecognizable, over-intellectualized *experience*.

What happened to a simple, glorious bowl of mac and cheese? Now it's "artisanal pasta shells coated in a bespoke four-cheese béchamel, aerated with a smoked paprika foam, served atop a toasted panko dust and finished with micro-herbs foraged from the chef's organic rooftop garden." NO! It's mac and cheese! It should be gooey, comforting, and taste like childhood, not like someone's doctoral thesis on dairy molecular gastronomy.

Every taco is now a "culinary journey" with "house-fermented salsas" and "heirloom corn tortillas pressed by hand at precisely 3:07 PM on a Tuesday during a full moon." I just want a freaking taco that tastes good, isn't dripping with philosophical intent, and doesn't require a loan to purchase!

This isn't innovation; it's an insecure performance! It's chefs and food bloggers and "curators" tripping over themselves to justify exorbitant prices and their own self-importance by making simple, delicious food into a convoluted art project. Stop deconstructing my pizza! Stop "reimagining" my burger! I don't need a spherical olive or a "soil" of dried vegetables on my plate. I need food that tastes good, fills me up, and doesn't require a lecture or an existential crisis to consume.

Bring back the unpretentious, the unapologetic, the downright *simple*! Because frankly, all this "culinary artistry" often just tastes like insecurity and an overpriced delusion. Give me real food, made with love and common sense, not a set of tweezers and an ego the size of a Michelin star.