Being married to a fellow journalist can have its drawbacks. Over the last weekend Brunch published my wife’s (Seema Goswami, since you ask) column on what annoys her the most about the poncy nonsense that chefs get up to. Since then, everyone I meet has asked me if I agree with her column/ diatribe.

It’s exactly to avoid this kind of situation that my wife and I have agreed that she will give restaurants a miss in her column. Yes, Brunch has lots of foodie content outside of my Rude Food column but since none of it has anything to do with me, I am never required to express an opinion. Moreover, it must be clear to people who know that we are married that we do most of our eating out together and that her palate and nose are far better than mine . So, it’s reasonable to ask if I agree with her.

Last week the entente cordiale broke down because my wife declared that I was too goodie goodie in my efforts to encourage chefs (which may be true) and that somebody needed to tell it like it really was. Hence that guided missile she disguised as a column.

If you missed the piece, it said in the second para “I am going to share with you some food trends I absolutely loathe” and then went on with the gentleness of a weapon of mass destruction to tear into what chefs are doing to food.

While I would never be as hard hitting as she was in her column, the problem was that, in general I agreed with her.

Let’s run through some of the criticisms and add a few of my own.

Flavour: People don’t say this aloud too often but the difficulty in introducing a new audience to a cuisine that it may be unfamiliar with is that chefs have to find ways of making the food taste more familiar.

For instance, when Nobu opened his first ‘modern Japanese’ restaurant in New York in 1994 (his original Los Angeles restaurant called Matsuhisa was more traditional) he made Japanese cuisine more appealing to Americans who thought that Japanese food was often too bland and often too raw.

Nobu is a genius, so he was able to take flavours that Americans liked and amplify them. His signature........

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