“The restaurants and chefs that are offering unique desserts and are changing out the dessert menu regularly are having the most success right now. “Desserts are never a high profit item, but a menu is incomplete without them.” Chef Bump says that trends certainly affect the types of desserts ordered, but it does not eliminate dessert completely. “I’ve heard a lot more restaurants that are not hiring pastry chefs and are starting to outsource dessert due to cost cutting,” Bump says. Augustine’s Preserved Restaurant, shares that desserts can be a tough sell for restaurants today.
What’s more, food costs are simply skyrocketing, and this has an effect on consumer choices when dining out.
It is not that the craving has decreased it is, perhaps, that ancillary noise around dessert has increased. “The act of labeling and categorizing foods as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is problematic and may lead to feelings of guilt and shame after eating a dessert.”Īny argument dethroning the desire for dessert becomes understandable under such light, even if it is not accurate. Thus, we are neurologically wired to enjoy the food,” says Steven Montesinos, principal licensed mental health counselor at Montesinos Counseling Services. “Neurologically speaking, eating is rewarding as it leads to the release of neurotransmitters (chemicals in our brains) that can positively affect our mood. Dessert, like all other foods, triggers joy. The brain distinguishes between sweet and bitter, what is liked and what isn’t in the same location. All sensory tastes are equally measured in the same area of the brain, the insular cortex. What is odd is that humans would wait until the end of a meal to eat dessert, when all fundamental decision-making models of human behavior would have this course be the first food consumed because waiting creates risk of having the highest caloric foods stolen by someone else.Įmotionally, dessert generally makes people feel happy, as well. Ben Hayden posits in a 2012 issue of Psychology Today that eating dessert is not counter to a natural human desire for reward. Neurologically and psychologically, people are predisposed to crave and devour desserts. It simply doesn’t end after the entree and dessert isn’t going to disappear,” Magsino says.
“As a chef, we can craft the journey from appetizer to dessert. “Dessert is a trigger to cultural memories we have about our families and our travels.” A pastry chef understands the effects of dessert on the brain and palate. “Today, dessert is more than a dish,” says Pastry Chef Leni Rose Magsino of Valley Smoke Restaurant. A leap into the Industrial Revolution brought new preservation methods and mass production that allowed dessert to spread throughout the social strata. Crusaders went to claim lands and brought back dried fruits and confections from the conquered as prizes. From there, sugary closures to meals were enjoyed by rulers and aristocrats, flaunting wealth via a burgeoning sugar cane trade route that connected India to the Middle East. But, well before the word existed, the concept of sweet treats thrived in Mesopotamia as offerings meant to please deities. Dessert still matters.įirst, a few facts for context: The word dessert comes from the French word desservir, meaning clear the table. At a time when reports of a more health-conscious dining clientele may indicate that sweets are disappearing from tables and menus, the final dish of the meal remains the highlight, remembered beyond departure, even after the faintest hint of sugar, chocolate or fruit fade away. A meal is not truly over until someone at the table pines over the decision to order a single dessert and, with it, enough spoons for everyone at the table to have an equal share in the joy, ecstasy, indulgence and guilt.
0 kommentar(er)
