At a new eatery in Greenwich Village, you can get your “all-natural” and “local” chicken topped with pretzels and salted caramel, or a Buffalo-style sauce made from aged balsamic vinegar and maple syrup.
The chicken is prepared three ways: baked, fried or “naked.”
And we’re not talking just any old piece of chicken. Rather, Sticky’s Finger Joint is devoted exclusively to “gourmet” renditions of that childhood cafeteria favorite — the chicken finger.
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The gourmet trend has been going on for more than a decade, but surely this is the final act, a sign the trend has jumped the shark, since every food option has seemingly been exhausted.
If chicken fingers aren’t your thing, there’s a brand-new East Village water cafe called Molecule specializing in “hyper-filtered, perfectly pure, eco-conscious” H2O. Love sandwiches? Empire Mayonnaise Co., which opened in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, this spring, sells $6 jars of mayo — and nothing else — in flavors such as lime-pickle and preserved lemon.
“There are certain things that make me roll my eyes: fancy grilled-cheese sandwiches or food trucks serving PB&J,” says Zach Brooks, founder of the popular food blog midtownlunch.com.
“My line is, ‘Can I make something at home that you’re selling me for five times as much?’ Certain things you can’t improve on. That’s why they’re classics.”
So what kind of reaction does the $19.50 grilled cheese with brie and truffles at Flatiron bistro Artisanal elicit within the darkest part of your heart? How about Handsome Dan’s Stand, a recently opened bespoke sno-cone shop (shoppe?) in Williamsburg serving flavors like Earl Grey cream, thyme and rose-pomegranate?
“When you look at the big picture of food trends, the bigger trend is wanting familiarity in foods,” says Mitchell Davis, vice president at the James Beard Foundation.
“Coming out of a movement of science and gastronomy, where nothing was ever as it appeared, it’s a natural reaction to want to do something with a hamburger or food that’s recognizable.”
But this effort to revamp recognizable items is now frequently taken to an absurd degree — and the backlash has begun. Brooklyn’s Empire Mayonnaise Co., for one, has been heaped with a shocking amount of scorn online and in the media.
“Hellman’s [sic] not good enough for you?” wrote one angry commenter on food blog Grub Street. “Support the city, support the borough you continue to destroy with this ridiculousness, stop with the overpriced gimmicks already.”
“Stop trying to turn Brooklyn into some magical land of adult-toddler whimsy,” wrote another.
Empire Mayonnaise co-founder Elizabeth Valleau points out that the store is just a 30-square-foot retail afterthought in the front of the business’ industrial kitchen, which bottles the mayo to sell to hotels, restaurants and mail-order customers. But she understands some people’s bewilderment at the mayo-only concept.
“In terms of things being too cute or too silly, I totally get it. But it’s a matter of taste,” she says.
“The one thing I’ve been trying to spread the gospel of is, don’t think of it as artisanal or twee or cute — just think of it as a small business.”
The line between a food concept that New Yorkers like and one they loathe seems dangerously thin — as well as nebulous.
The thinking seems to go, if customers like this one humble thing — say, a doughnut — then they’re going to love this jazzed-up, fancy, expensive doughnut exponentially more. New Upper East Side kosher market Prime Butcher Baker, for example, offers a super high-end version of something we’re used to eating at a gas station: beef jerky.
It’s made from hand-sliced rib-eye, marinated for 36 hours, then dried, and it costs $80 a pound.
It’s unclear how far some foods can be elevated before becoming a case of diminishing returns for eaters.
“I think there is a lot of bogus upscaling that goes on,” says Jane Goldman, general manager at the foodie Web site Chowhound.
“There are certain things that shouldn’t be upscaled. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. It’s more of a cerebral event or a funny joke than it is a real good food experience, like all these fancy flavors of doughnuts using really complicated ingredients that may not taste better than a regular glazed doughnut.”
And even with foods where elevation is possible, it may not be desirable. Every food can be made better, true, but in doing so, it risks losing its identity, losing a bit of what made it so good in the first place. These foods are lowbrow by nature. We like a hamburger precisely because it’s not a steak, and we like a fish stick precisely because it is not a $30 slab of poached escolar.
Is the “Wylie Dog,” consisting of a deep-fried wiener, a stick of deep-fried mayo, “tomato molasses,” freeze-dried onions and shredded romaine dreamed up by wd-50’s Wylie Dufresne and served at PDT in the East Village, even a hot dog at all? Only God and the guy who drives the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile know for sure.
“I hear complaints a lot [about this trend],” Davis says. “Like with the DB Bistro [$32 short ribs and foie gras] burger, the question is, ‘Is it any more satisfying to the guest than a regular burger? If you put truffles on something, it becomes expensive, but again, do you need them?’ I don’t think you do.”
Paul Abrahamian, the founder of Sticky’s Finger Joint, says that customers shouldn’t roll their eyes at upscale-lowbrow items, because they’re about better ingredients.
“If you go to a place with a $30 burger, you know you’re getting $30 worth. You are what you eat,” he says. “Not to say that a $5 burger isn’t great, but there are huge differences in quality in what you’re actually getting.”
He says his restaurant spends $4 a pound for hormone- and antibiotic-free chicken breast, when it could be paying 80 cents a pound for the cheaper stuff.
The one element overlooked in this, and almost every food trend, is the p.r.-driven nature of the business. Restaurants often need press and attention to survive, and simple, well-prepared dishes don’t grab headlines. Gimmicks and outrageous combinations do. The DB Bistro burger, probably the grandfather of this trend, got global buzz when it was introduced in 2001, and we’ve all since read about similarly showy menu items, including the $175 burger at the now-defunct Wall Street Burger Shoppe and the $85 truffled mac ‘n’ cheese at the Waverly Inn.
As San Domenico owner Tony May once told The Post about the Waverly dish, “If you can have a better dish with [a truffle], why use something that’s not appropriate? If you have to have it, why eat second-rate?”
At a certain point (your mileage may vary), fancified versions of downmarket items just become overkill.
Perhaps it’s worth noting that the best-selling variety at Sticky’s is called “The Finger.” It’s a plain, old Southern-fried chicken finger. No foie gras needed.
reed.tucker@nypost.com