415. Zoomers And Flavour Shock.

 

  I am an old man who likes to dine out in good food restaurants. I am a student of food trends but only because one may eventually tire if one eats too much of the same sort of thing time and time again and consequently I want to have something different which therefore necessitates knowing what the latest food trend is, and sometimes these trends come thick and fast. I am not a dining expert, though my experience is quite broad especially in the West Midlands, and therefore I sometimes discover that I’ve missed something that perhaps I should have picked up on some time ago.

The 6 dining trends

  Today was one of those days. I saw something on the internet where, some months ago, The Caterer was reporting predicted food trends for the coming year and top of the list was Foodshock. Nope, I didn’t know what that was. I’ve tried reading about it but it’s all still very vague to me. Apparently it’s all about what Generation Z (is that pronounced Zed or Zee?, perhaps someone will tell me) wants. I get terribly confused about which Generation is which but, no doubt to their pleasure, Z seems to be those who will be entering the early stages of Middle age. 

  It’s the work from home generation who have never known physical work though they may have paid a lot of money to carry out physical activity in a gymnasium with a ‘trainer’ or even a ‘personal trainer’ to oversee their exertions. They’re moving out of their flats in cool neighbourhoods because the demands of parenthood, to which they’ve come relatively late, have landed on their doorsteps and they’re moving into houses, preferably in better neighbourhoods, which their swollen salaries earned from sitting in front of a computer and answering text messages and phone calls and sitting in Zoom meetings, have enabled them to purchase. And of course they can afford to dine out, quite frequently in quite expensive, even the swankiest, restaurants in town and in the coolest suburbs, where they mingle with aging hipsters, all of them swigging their negronis.

  Anyway, I read that Flavour Shock is just what Generation Z is looking for. I hope they recognise it when they find it. I think I have. Last week I went again to Albatross Death Cult and I think that glorious restaurant must be a very real manifestation of Flavour Shock. Apart from myself it seemed that all the other diners there were of either Generation Z or late Millenials. I doubted that there was anyone there under 35 (though a flamboyant gay character who held his wine glass as far down the stem as he could manage but with the added affectation of holding his little finger out while holding his glass - rather as middle class Edwardian woman once did with their tea cups - looked nearer forty despite his lustrous hair. I enjoyed watching them all and chatting with a lovely couple obviously in their mid-thirties - he with early streaks of grey appearing in the hair over his temples - who had found life in Birmingham cheaper than the capital from which they had moved and had been to most notable restaurants that one could think of. 

And here we all were experiencing the big flavours of the small plates that Alex Claridge and his crew had come up with. Each dish could be described as delivering a flavour shock so I guess that dining at A_D_C is the best way to experience flavour shock. And I like it. Riverine Rabbit has the same effect, though perhaps slightly less extreme than the effect at A_D_C and with them being my favourite restaurants in the city at present, I guess I could claim to an honorary member of Generation Z, as immersed in Flavour Shock as anyone in the city (though I am at least double the age of any genuine ‘Zoomer’).

The Albatross menu on this occasion was very similar to that previously reported though there were one or two changes - out had gone the lobster dish to be replaced by gorgeous cod with yuzu and miso but not one course out of the sixteen served, failed to give pleasure, frequently extreme pleasure..

Cod, yuzu, miso  Flavour shock

Sea bass, jalapeño, cordal olive. Flavour shock!

Plump, meaty mussels, back pepper & iberico. Flavour shock!

sushi rice cream, nori tuiles. Dreamy, dreamy dessert.

And now, I’m wondering, after Flavour shock, what comes next? Regardless, for the present, we’ll eat what we are given and will certainly be glad of it. But I must look up what Irresistible vegetables is going to mean for me.