'Every fault is a fashion' - what my grandmother would have thought about modern restaurant serving trends

Serving with kilner jars on a slate (Photo: Yvonne Carty @heypestoie)

"Every Fault is a Fashion."

I remember my grandmother saying this when I was a child. To be honest I never really understood it then. But recently it has popped into my head a lot.

I follow a lot of foodies on Twitter and many of them tweet photos of food, or of meals they have eaten, or are currently eating out. The most recent was a picture tweeted where a starter was served in a Kilner jar. For those of you who don't know what a Kilner jar is - it is a jar traditionally used for preserving fruit, chutneys, jams et cetera. You know the type with the flip top lid and a rubber seal?

Another photo I saw was of homemade lemonade and iced tea being served in jam jars. The jam jars had a straw popped in them. I really can't get excited about drinking out of a jar but customers love their "retro" feel.

Drinking from jam jars (Photo: Lily Ramirez-Foran @MexicancookEire)

The food industry is no different to any other in that fashions come and go. Using slate to serve food is very "in" at the moment. Now slate looks great - it really shows off the color, the texture of food and is the perfect matte backdrop. However, do you remember the teacher scraping her nails on the blackboard in school? Well that's what cutlery sounds like when it is used on these "plates". Imagine a restaurant dining room full of people scraping their cutlery on slate plates? Actually I would rather not.

My grandmother's saying went through my head when I saw all of the images and I wondered what she would have made of it. She wouldn't have gone out to eat very much as in her day as money was not very plentiful. But knowing her as I did - I know that when she did go out, she would have wanted the whole fine dining experience.

To a woman like her, Kilner jars and jam jars were the tools of her trade, as she preserved fruit and vegetables my grandfather had grown for their family to eat in the long cold winters. The idea of being taken out for a treat and being served up her food or drink in a jar. Or even on a slate.....

I can still hear her say "every fault is a fashion". But I think she would have laughed.

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