Jesus! They're In The Room.

It was the last thing I saw before I squeegeed my eyeballs.

“Download a recipe for this flavorful, veg-forward, bowl.”

I estimate between 50 and 100 pieces of communication on an average working day. It goes with the job.  Almost all are about food and drink, which narrows things down a bit. A few are direct from producers or restaurateurs - God forgive me - ‘reaching out’. 

This is not normal, but it does mean that you become preternaturally aware of disturbances in the Force. A few months ago, nobody had trout on their menu at all. Then, within a week, half the chefs in town seemed to offer Chalk Stream Trout. This is how you know that they’re all getting it from the same supplier (and, to be miserably honest, how you also know it will have disappeared within a month).

But the bulk of communication comes from people who, to some degree or another, are professionally generating copy. This is where the eyeball squeegeeing comes into the picture. A buzzword or a figure of speech can crop up like a fungal infection, spread through the discourse, and before you know it, everyone is “reaching out”. 

As I’ve said before, many times. Writing about food is like writing bad porn. When you’re attempting to create something that gives instant vicarious pleasure, you don’t get to beat about the bush. Cliché, stereotype, easily recognisable shorthand tropes, massive repetitiveness, staggeringly over-equipped plumbers - no space, or indeed, demand, for contextualising plot.

So, in general, we don’t want to further restrict our limited toolbox by ‘banning’ certain words (except ‘flavorful’ or ‘veg-forward’. Anyone who types that should be shot in the face).

But sometimes... in the last few months, in fact. You’ll spot an ‘outbreak’ in food communication. It starts, at first, with a hunch, then a burgeoning sense of irritation. Then you start to question yourself. Are you falling victim to some subtle confirmation bias? The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Frequency Illusion?

But no... it keeps re-appearing.

“Dirty Martini - Our Go-to Pour!” (Exclamation marks copywriter’s own)

There it is again.  

Remember that moment in Aliens (1986) when the trapped space marines are staring at their motion detector screen...

5 metres? 3 metres? That can’t be right. They’d be in the room. 

And slowly everybody stares up at the ceiling...

Bloody Hell. 

Synecdoche!

Suddenly, without warning, half of press releases and 72.8% of headlines contain a form of metonymy wherein the substitution is a literal component or physical part of the whole.

I mean, it was bad enough when it was ‘Best Slice in Hackney’ but... 

“Sensational Sips for Summer!!”

(Truly. By their exclamation marks shall you know them)

As a literary device to make language more concise more vivid? Sure. Using a symbol instead of literal, dry descriptions? Hell yeah. Deeper nuance through imagery. Who but an oaf would complain? 

But “London’s Hottest Bites Right Now!”

Look. I surely do love me a metonym. The pen, after all, is mightier than the sword. 

But this makes me want to drop the Mont Blanc and pick up a claymore.