Frisee aux lardons is a traditional French salad: frisee greens, topped with a poached egg and tiny lardons. When you hit the egg with your fork, the yolk dresses the frisee, and you have a nice salad that’s flavored intensely with bacon and eggs. Sounds fancy, but it’s a simple dish…and once you try it, you may indeed have hardons for lardons.

It reminds me a bit of the old show ‘Absolutely Fabulous,’ where Jennifer Saunders wore the blouse that said “LACROIX” in foot-high gold letters. Portlanders would (rightfully) giggle at that kind of brand-whoring, but it’s on nearly every menu in town.

When a restaurant’s at a certain price level and reputation, I don’t expect it to be serving Sysco-truck crap. And I guess all this brand-naming of the food is supposed to reassure the diner, but it has the opposite effect on me; it makes me think the restaurateur doesn’t trust me to know quality from Kroger pressed ham product.

pumpkin butter. thats pumpkin and butter.

meyer lemons have a distinct taste, not really pretentious to identify them.

terra madre is a step up from bottom basement olive oil. sort of vaguely pretentious, i mean, a good restaurant you assume they don’t use swill. but still..

minted yogurt is just an identifier. up till a moment ago i had no idea what harissa is, but its a pretty normal sauce.

With that said, I do find the following menu excerpts to be a little pretentious:

• frisee with lardons
• pumpkin butter
• meyer lemon
• terra madre olive oil
• minted yogurt and harissa

Don’t you?

so does anything look pompous on that to you?

I also have a real problem with some of the over-the-top pretentious foodie menus I’ve encountered. It seems chefs are trying to outdo each other with the amount of obscure and cryptic dish descriptions. Maybe some people like that pompous shit, but it just annoys the hell out of me.