It’s been a while since I devoured the internet in search of highly offensive food trends, but my socials are taking the biscuit this month and I’m seeing a lot of dishes that walk a fine line between disgusting and delicious.
I’ve picked the weirdest and worst and tried them for you to see if we are totally gullible in lapping this stuff up, or whether the youth is onto something and I’m just being an old granny who cares too much about cuisine.
Caviar on top of raw onion. A skincare dinner, by @danicolexx
What is it? A massive slice of raw red onion, topped with lemon, olive oil and salt and pepper, with a whole can of caviar dumped on it.
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The can of caviar is what’s set the internet alight: caviar is everywhere right now, from high-end restaurants to every fashion party, and is now being touted as a health trend. And you cannot deny it’s one of the most biologically intelligent foods out there: full of omegas, including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), a long-chain omega-3 fatty acid crucial for heart health, reducing triglycerides, and managing inflammation and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which supports brain function, eye health, and heart health.
It’s anti-inflammatory and creates an oil that can be easily absorbed from the stomach; it’s also great for memory, brain stabilising and thyroid support. Salmon caviar (keta) is even better as it’s even richer in all the good oils and vitamins A, D, E and K, and the pink pigment, astaxanthin, is also great for eye health.
The health science industry has taken note and Caviar Biotech, a company investing in caviar oils for health, sells a pure caviar oil, from the stem cells and enzymes of the caviar sack (essentially a by product), which means you can get all the goodness of caviar without the wastage which used to happen during caviar farming.
These eggs are a very expensive product: farming a sturgeon means growing them for up to 25 years and the caviar costs £1,400 a kilo up to £4,800. Historically, the high-end stuff was made by the eggs being cut and squeezed out of the body of a living sturgeon, which was then thrown back into the lakes to quite literally sink or swim.
More recently, though, it’s being farmed and controlled in a much more sustainable way, in accordance with CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), meaning the whole fish gets used.
My main issue with this dish is that caviar should be eaten with white carbohydrates and fats. Caviar is salted, so it is the perfect umami topping for blini, latke or a buttery, sour-creamed jacket potato.
I do the tasting. I drench a thick slice of red onion in lemon, olive oil and a little salt, and top it with 15g of Beluga caviar. This single bite costs £25. It’s spicy, astringent and hurts my mouth. I will eat almost anything and everything – but this is inedible. I scrape the caviar off, eat it with a spoon and throw the onion out. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten. It’s sacrilegious, and my breath is now honking.
Caviar is a luxury ingredient and should be treated respectfully; there is something distasteful about guzzling it as skin food.
1/10
Gizzi made a snack plate with sardines, organic cottage cheese, a roasted Japanese sweet potato, avocado, kimchi, a boiled egg, guindillo green peppers and fermented chilli sauce
Sardine snack plate, by @allyqueeks
What is it? A plate that starts with a tin of sardines, for health, surrounded by other high-fat, high-protein and high-nutritional-value foods to make your motor run like a sports car.
These viral snack plates are crammed full of all the current superfoods, and I want good skin, good guts and a good brain – so what’s not to like?
I have actually been eating a lot of these plates already, ramping up my omegas with technicolour foods, so I feel half smug and half cross with myself. Everything in my educated food-loving mind and body thinks this trend is wrong and I’ve been vocal in the past about my loathing of ‘girl dinners’ full of picky bits from Marks and Sparks. But it’s pure snobbery, and barking mad, as I love a buffet, essentially a gratuitous plate of picky bits.
The ones I’ve come across online are often weird and today I’ve made one with a tin of high-quality sardines in really good extra virgin olive oil, some organic cottage cheese, half a roasted Japanese sweet potato, half an avocado, some kimchi, a jammy middle-boiled egg, some guindillo green peppers and fermented chilli sauce.
It’s completely strange, but everything on that plate serves a purpose and the more I eat the more I enjoy it. Sardines are becoming an obsession.
If I squint, it’s almost a nicoise?
9/10
‘I’ve not had frog’s legs for at least two decades, not that I’m offended by them – they’ve just not been about,’ says Gizzi
Frog legs and escargot @gabriette
What is it? French bistro classics, such as frog legs and snails, are both drenched in garlic butter.
I’ve been heart throbbing on Gabriette, the model/cook who is famously engaged to Matt Healy from The 1975, for years. If you haven’t heard of her, she’s Gen Z’s Kate Moss, who’s inexplicably cool and loves to eat out – and she cooks surprisingly good food.
During Paris Fashion Week, she and her model friends have been seen eating escargot and frog legs, thus bringing these classic French ingredients to the attention of the extremely online.
Snails have been bobbing around in the cool restaurants for a while, but while I must give a nod to the impeccable snail and wild garlic butter flatbreads at Bistro Freddie, I want some classic gastropods.
They are not easy to find. I’ve not had frog legs for at least two decades, I’m not offended by them – they’ve just not been about. The last time I had them, they were the infamous Joel Rebouchon’s little breaded froggy limbs in a fine garlic and parsley puree.
I’ve had the most sublime, garlic buttery-finger escargot AND a smashing escargot ravioli with lobster bisque recently at Otto’s French restaurant, but it’s the frog legs I need.
I finally find them at the quaint French restaurant in Islington, so off I trot. These are braised in Calvados and cream, then doused in garlic butter. I have a side of snails too. The restaurant is mid, and they are under-seasoned, but they are exactly as people often describe them – fishy chicken. It’s a roasting day, I’m in black Lycra, living my supermodel dream. I have a glass of Pic Poul and crave my first ciggy in about 30 years. Tres chic.
4/10 for experience,10/10 for ideology
During Paris Fashion Week, Gabriette and her model friends have been seen eating escargot and frog legs, bringing these classic French ingredients back in fashion
Chia and okra water @chazslifestyle
What is it? Two tablespoons of chia seeds or 4-5 sliced okra mixed in half a pint of water and drunk the next day.
The last and final thing that I am going to put out here is for the hell that I experienced. It’s the “slime water” made with either okra or chia. Both have different benefits, but achieve roughly the same thing – extreme hydration, with slower absorption and laying down some of the most impressive prebiotics out there.
Nutritionally, chia brings omega-3s, fibre and minerals, while okra adds mucilage, Vitamin C and polyphenols – useful, but not transformative in these small quantities.
Drinking slime is not an easy ride, and there are cases out there where people have over-egged the (chia) pudding and given themselves swollen intestines. Mixing them with juices helps them go down, and the chia one is bearable, but the okra is too slimy, and I gag the whole way in getting it down. It’s all I can think about for the day.
Chaz makes hers with coconut water and a flavouring like pineapple. If I’d added fruit, I’m sure it would have been exponentially better.
Water is great. Drink water.
5/10
Dining and Cooking