Trendy

Remember the cupcake craze/trend/fad? Well according to The Atlantic’s food section, macarons are the next food craze. Yikes. I’ve posted a lot of macaron material on the site recently. Am I perpetuating a food fad?

We can pretty much thank Sex and the City for the cupcake craze in New York — the impact of the show is still quite evident when you’re looking at the long lines [mostly women] wrapped around Bleeker Street. Speaking of food crazes/fads, remember that time when L.A. was obsessed with fro-yo (ahem, Pinkberry) and frappacinos? Remember when Pinkberry started popping up everywhere in New York? Remember when everything bacon related was awesome in New York (bacon in every entree!)?

Food crazes seem to be particularly worse in L.A. and New York simply because you have your health conscious/beach-body obsessed residents versus the food enthusiast/”foodie” New Yorkers where it’s impossible to eat at every single restaurant in the city due to the number of restaurant openings and the number of restaurant closings. You don’t see Cincinnati or Minneapolis go nuts over a food trend in addition to the hometown favorites and inventions.

I love cupcakes, but it is mystifying how something that has been around for awhile becomes “trendy” all of a sudden. Liz Neumark correctly writes in the Huffington Post, “Food is fashion. And though there are timeless classics (like a Chanel jacket, the perfectly cooked pig in a blanket) culinary innovation is a year round project.” Like fashion, some things in food become cyclical. Fondue was in around the 60s and 70s but then we saw the rise of fondue places in the early 2000s in addition to current offerings in a few restaurants — The Melting Pot chain and Trestle on Tenth in New York comes to mind. Maybe we will see the rise of pizza bagels again? [Note: I should add that as an 80s child, nothing comes to mind because it seems like we were all about the boxed food and packaged things back then.]

The rest of Neumark’s article is an interesting read. On the subject of food fads, do you think macarons will really be the next new food fad? Personally, I think we should be embarking on the decade of french fries because they’re delicious.

(photos via Terry Richardson)