In the world of food criticism, I always try to remain apolitical. I even refrain from identifying the age or gender of servers and my circle of dining companions.
But as the calendar pages turn over to 2017, I must confess that the tone deafness of the GOP Christmas message makes me snicker: “Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King.” Can you picture Pence, McConnell and Ryan riding their camels from the Capitol past the new Trump (conflict-of-interest) Hotel at the Old Post Office to the little manger at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?
As I watched with bemusement while the President-elect assembled his new cabinet, my mind couldn’t help wandering and wondering — tongue in cheek — what this age of Trump might mean for the world of cuisine.
How will trickle-down economics, “free trade,” neocon warmongering and various fronts of the culture wars affect the world of gastronomy? Trump has appointed an unprecedented number of people to head departments and agencies whose mission or very existence they oppose, which ironically conflicts with the Constitution preamble’s claims that government should “promote the general welfare.”
Let your imagination go and you may see the following 10 food trends in 2017.
1. The small plate movement will thrive, but serving sizes will shrink as portions refuse to trickle down.
2. Though Russian caviar prices will soar, the classic, questionably named Italian pasta sauce will now be widely known as Putin-esca.
3. Big Oil will reign supreme; the controversy over EVOO pipelines will continue.
4. With Rick Perry at the Department of Energy, new energy bars will be Texas-sized, but new flavor names will be restricted to fossil fuels.
5. Advisor Steve Bannon and Andy Puzder (Secretary of Labor) will team up for a new fast-food restaurant chain hawking “alt-right burgers” celebrating the old Confederacy. Orders will be served by Jeff Sessions robots in KKK hoods, and the packaging will be based on the Stars and Bars. Puzder will praise the robots as ideal workers, and the long history of allegations that he cheated his managers out of overtime pay will be forgotten.
6. As the the GOP works to replace Obamacare, there will be a new Health & Human Services advertising campaign based on the old axiom, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” (which dates back to the days when life expectancy was 40.5 years). Sales of apples will soar.
7. Daily restaurant specials — designed to clear out the walk-ins before any food spoils — will be sold on menus nationwide as a tasty “basket of deplorables.”
8. Bakers across America will develop a delicious, moist “kleptocracy cupcake with tangy billionaire buttercream” in a craze that will sweep the nation.
9. Trump’s hostility toward the government in Beijing will depress Chinese takeout, and chop suey, egg rolls and fortune cookies will finally be unmasked for being as legit as Trump University.
10. Finally, the “Make America Grate Again” movement will see a rise in recipes that include bits of orange and lemon zest, cheese, ginger, chocolate, nutmeg and “orange alert” carrots.
This article appears in Jan 5-12, 2017.
