When the legendary Maggie Smith passed away a while ago, one viral clip in particular caught my eye. It features actor Maggie Smith – as what character I do not know – going on a rant about the proper way to make tea:
“Listen and learn, son. Tea is a herb that’s been dried out, and to bring it back to life you have to infuse it in boiling water. That is BOILING water. Everywhere I have been in this country [the United States], they slap down and a cup of tepid nonsense, you know, with the tea bag lying beside it, which means I have got to go through the ridiculous business of dunking it in the lukewarm piss, waiting for the slightest change of color to occur.”
This got me thinking about my own grievances, and therefore wishes, regarding the current and future state of the food and drinks I am being served in restaurants and cafés.
Since I am not in the position to question Maggie Smith, I’m going to to start with tea. Please, restaurants, get a kettle. Nobody wants the lukewarm, vaguely like soap tasting water that your coffee machine provides for making tea. Also, what’s going on with tea selections? Have people just forgotten that herbal tea exists? The lengths I have to go to find a place that serves a chamomile tea – an undeniable classic beverage across most of Europe, that among many other benefits settles your stomach and therefore makes you feel better about the food you just ate – in this country is astounding. Please, if it’s a space issue, just replace your, I don’t know, Lipton Earl Gray x Lychee blend with chamomile.
Don’t mess with the classics
Having grown up in the Netherland’s in the ’00s, I’m a big fan of eating a nice sandwich for lunch. You know, an “item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between them, eaten as a light meal”? TWO PIECES OF BREAD. Lately, what I’ve been getting is one piece of bread, with too many different ingredients pilled on top of it, finished of with a 1980’s style sauce swirl. No second piece of bread in sight. Why? Why mess with a classic? If I want one piece of bread, I will order a canapé (if only one could order canapés here, the Swiss child in me weeps about this regularly).
Please, please stop serving vegetarians and vegans your horrible vegetable curry. You cannot make curry, and – looking at your menu – you should not make curry. Sure, some of you can, but chances are that those of you that can already make and serve plenty of other vegetarian dishes as well. So this point is for all of you that cannot and do not. Just focus on the food you are great at making and leave out the meat, or, since it is 2025, use one of approximately 4,000 meat replacement products. Also, if I see one more pumpkin lasagne or beet burger, I will scream.
Finally, it is time to bring black classic deserts. Dessert menus, if they even exist anymore (since a tasteless red velvet pie in a sad glass case does not count as a dessert menu), are looking more and more, uh, “creative” to me. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: you, and very likely nobody else, will ever come up with a dessert better than a Banana Split, or a Crème Brûlée, or Kaiserschmarrn, etc. And if somehow you, or more likely someone else, does come up with a new desert of that caliber, I bet you a Poire Belle Hélène that it will not include balsamic vinegar or chilly. I’m sorry.
Marius Zürcher
About the author:
The co-owner & founder of Millennial & Gen Z marketing and employer branding agency 1520 in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, Marius Zürcher was a participant at FCSI’s ‘Millennials’ focused roundtable at INTERGASTRA and a speaker at FCSI workshops about industry trends.
