Food menus that are gimmicks

Did plan to run any stories on the Mayan end of the world predictions, a normally sensible PR flack asked me a couple of weeks ago. Inexplicably, we didn't. The catch was that her restaurant client was promoting a HK$2012.12 menu to mark the apocalypse.

It's not the only weak sales gimmick we've heard this year. Earlier on, another restaurant cashed in on the 100th anniversary of 1,502 deaths, with a Titanic-themed menu promotion.

Sometimes there is a fine line between creativity and gimmickry. If you've eaten at View 62 you may, like me, feel that the olive oil butter that comes in a small toothpaste tube is redeemed from silliness by its delicious taste. The gazpacho that comes frozen in the shape of a crab shell and is placed over a crab tartare leaves you wondering how the chef did it. The ramen-style broth that comes with a syringe of paste to squirt into it to form noodles leaves you wondering why the chef did it.

The broth was deeply flavoured but we were puzzled by the connotations of the syringe. Were we supposed to feel like nurses ministering to the sick or edgy junkies banging up smack?

While I would happily return to this restaurant, I won't be revisiting the heroin chic dish.

Sometimes the gimmick isn't the food but the spin that's put on it.