Earlier this week, I wrote about my pet peeve for tomatoes and the fact that grocery stores do not carry good ones right smack in the middle of summer, a.k.a. tomato season. But that was just the start of my thoughts on food pet peeves I have. So with that, here are a few more…..
Soft pretzels dipped in butter–I blame Auntie Anne’s for this, but now butter-drenched pretzels are the only ones you can buy in any mall across the country. I might be old-school here (no, I KNOW I’m old-school), but I long for soft pretzels you can buy that are drenched in nothing but salt. Seriously, butter goes on a pretzel like ketchup goes on ice-cream. Okay, that’s extreme, but you get my drift. But the final straw happened to me recently when I was in Target and tried to buy a pretzel without the butter. They looked at me funny, and said they needed to drench it in order for salt to adhere to it. I asked if I could buy the display one, which appeared to be butter-less, and they said that that was a fake pretzel. Go figure.
Hydration systems for produce–Seriously, do you really need to drench the lettuce and herbs until they practically wilt and turn brown? And do they have to spray every 10 seconds so that when I reach for something I get soaked?
Peaches–This is akin to my tomato gripe. Why is it that more than half of grocery store peaches are hard as a rock? I’ll tell you why. Because they pick them way before they should be picked. And they don’t ripen. Those hard ones only become slightly less hard, and they crunch when you bite into them like an apple. That’s just wrong.
High-fructose corn syrup–It’s known to be really bad for us, so why is it the primary ingredient now in things like soft drinks and popsicles? And why is it in supposedly healthy items like whole wheat bread? I bet soon we’ll be brushing our teeth with the stuff.
Raw onions–If you’ve eaten a raw onion, you know that it has an extremely strong and pungeant taste. Cooked onions are delicious and sweet, but raw onions are vile. So why does every restaurant insist on throwing them on my salad? I don’t always remember to ask for them to be omitted and in that case have to remove them myself. Inevitably, even if I use a fork, the onion smell gets on my hands and I can’t wash it off for three days. And if I miss a piece in my salad and eat it by accident, I have to deal with the lingering taste in my mouth the rest of the day. I also have horribly bad breath to deal with. And I feel like I could drink seven gallons of water. Seriously, why?? And how do you people who eat big slabs of raw onion on your burger taste the freaking burger?
Seasoned fries–I may be old-school again here, but I’ve grown tired of excessive seasoning on my French fries. Fries are best when they are cooked in oil and lightly salted–that’s it. But restaurants, and I’m talking in particular about chains, decided at some point that coating my fries with additional spices like pepper, paprika, garlic powder, chili powder or all of the above was a good idea. Let me help you here…it’s never a good idea.
Servers who don’t use a pen–This is more of a restaurant-only pet peeve. Why do servers insist on trying to remember my order as well as everyone at the table’s order without writing it down? I am never impressed if you don’t screw up my order, but I’m always impressed if you have the class (and common sense) to write my order down so that it’s harder to screw up.
Hey, that was fun! Feel free to add yours….
I’m not going to profess being a restaurant critic, nor even a trendy food blogger. What I am is an average Joe with a food blog who knows good food when he eats it. And two Fridays ago when I had lunch with a buddy and business associate in Cleveland, we ate at 
