2022: The Year of Unnecessary Burrata

I like burrata as much as you do, but why the hell is this unwieldy ball of runny cheese on seemingly every dish this year? It’s been noticeable to me.

I also love a good negative review of bad high-end food. Luckily, these two things have come together in Robert Sietsema’s Worst Dishes of 2022 list.

Burrata and salad Olivier at Slava: The appearance of burrata on area menus — really just a runny form of mozzarella — was a blessing at first, but it gradually began showing up everywhere in dishes it didn’t belong. It quickly became a nuisance ingredient, one that you were expected to plow through and pay extra for that didn’t really add anything. Thus, newcomer Slava, a supposed Ukrainian restaurant that never seems to have consulted a Ukrainian cookbook, uselessly plopped a burrata down in the middle of an Olivier salad. This Russian side dish basically adds mixed vegetables to mayo potato salad and the result is nearly always mediocre. But now put a big indigestible ball of burrata in the middle and — you get the idea — meh added to more meh. (The dish recently disappeared from the menu.)

Why would you add burrata to a dish like this? It sounds like a crappy dish anyway, but what is the burrata supposed to do?

Some of these other dishes look horrible. We all know that Brooklyn has The Greatest Brisket on Earth but this version in Manhattan makes it look like Louie Mueller’s in beautiful Taylor, Texas. The idea of two giant meatballs weighing a half-pound each and having no flavor sounds like someone was trying to attract Homer Simpson into the restaurant. And that mozzarella bagel thing, my god someone intervene here to save these people from themselves.