The New Parsley

By Susan M. Keenan

Restaurant owners realize the climate of today’s dining out experience.  Their challenge simply isn’t to provide food that is edible and tasty.  Nor is the challenge to provide a meal with a classy name and an expensive price tag.  Nor is the task to deliver an ambience unlike any other restaurant ambience.  Rather, the challenge has become multi-faceted in a way that is demanding, and includes all of these individual tasks.

 

Today, competition is so fierce that restaurant owners must stay on the ball and constantly come up with new and challenging ideas.  This equates to new décor, attractive menus, themes throughout the décor, themes throughout the menu listings, new advertising logos and layouts, and food that not only tastes good, but also looks pretty, even if we don’t know what it is that we are eating.

 

Dining out has become a unique experience from the appetizer all of the way to the dessert.  No more plain and simple touches.  No more knowing that customers will arrive simply because the restaurant is there and the customer is hungry.  No more parsley on the sides of our dinner entrees either.

 

Parsley, once popular, has been banished to the back of the refrigerator, and is avoided whenever possible.  This culinary herb, a little green sprig that used to add a little bit of color to our dinner entrees, is now considered too pedestrian or dull.  The once curly leaves that used to sit so perkily on our plates, now sits in darkness, waiting to prove itself once again.

 

This new spin on the dinner dish is designed to attract customers, please customers, and bring them back clamoring for more. Just as there are key ingredients to identifying ethnic cuisines, restaurant owners desire to have secret ingredients and unique garnishes that will identify them and make them stand out.  They aspire to have something that is not only different, but is also “out of this world” and “out of the ordinary.”

 

While culinary ethnicity and ethnic cuisine may dictate to a certain degree the type of garnish that appealingly sits perched on the edge of the main entrée, imagination and creativity dictate the actual selections.  Parsley, the old standby, has been banished to the realms of the netherworld at most restaurants and has been replaced with an eclectic array of choices.

 

Flavored, flowered, and fruity seem to be the words to describe the new parsley adorning our dinner dishes.  Boldly or mildly flavored dollops of butter, subtly flavored mini-rolls, spicily flavored tri-color tortilla chips, and sharply flavored cubes of cheese take preferential places of importance next to larger and more expensive food items.

 

Flowers are back in vogue.  Elaborately carved tomato roses, brightly colored and carved radish flowers, delicate purple and white mini orchids, as well as a variety of other edible, colorful, and fragile flowers have all taken over where their peer, parsley, used to sit.  Since true flowers, not those carefully carved from fruits or vegetables, have an extremely delicate flavor, it is extremely important to keep the main dish’s flavoring as simple as possible.

 

Fruits and vegetables are also making a strong appearance, either together or separately.  Curls of cucumber stuffed with colorful pieces of fruit or vegetable, fruit slices arranged in a fan shape, melon balls placed upon a lively bed of lettuce, or even a colorful array of citrus peels are all making guest appearances that turn into long engagements.

 

Garnishes are as important to the meal as the main entrée.  Initially, they are meant to whet the appetite by their visual appearance.  Next, they are to awaken the appetite with their gentle or daring flavor that also complements the rest of the dinner experience.  Remember a garnish may be simple or intricate in design, but its purpose is always the same- to have them clamoring for more. 

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