Foodie hell.

Having just had a close call with a food 'experience' I find myself becoming almost obsessed with the way in which modern food is beginning to mimic the trajectory of modern art.

Like Hurst, Emin and Co, it's almost as if chefs (or 'cooks' as we used to call them before they all got their own TV programmes) have tired of the effort needed to prepare traditional 'real' food correctly and decided instead to turn customer confusion into a competitive sport.

With the brazenness and slight of hand of a music hall magicians, restaurants compete to offer the weirdest and most unlikely combination of foods in the safe knowledge that the stranger the dish, the less likely the customer is to have had any previous experience against which to judge it. After all, if you've never tried pickled sheep's eyes on a bed of frog-snot ice cream garnished with venezualan goat-hoof scrapings how are you to know if the dish you're presented with has been carefully crafted by a team of professionals toiling away on the cutting edge of culinary technology or thrown together by a couple of art school drops outs in silly hats, laughing themselves stupid in the kitchen at the gullibility of their customers?

Let's face it, no matter how much you gush to your friends about your extraordinary foodie adventures, it's unlikely that you're ever going to spend that much money again on that particular ridiculous dish at that particular absurd restaurant, so even the narrowest of comparisons within the same establishment is ruled out. After all, what true explorer wants to re-visit previous conquests, when there are new vistas of artfully arranged unlikely food combinations to explore?

And if the dish is 'unique' (in our mass produced age unique is the new black) you'll never be able to compare it with another chef's 'interpretation', particularly if it has been copyrighted.

I'm in the middle of a personal backlash against this tripe, I wonder if a wider backlash is in the offing? Who cares? I certainly don't, I'm off home for bangers and mash.