So I’m finishing up The Rough Guide to NYC, and writing up the outer-borough restaurant reviews. In the process of ferreting out addresses and phone numbers, I’m coming across quite a lot of other bits of food writing and restaurant commentary.

And I will slit my own throat if I ever again have to read that “[certain food item] is a revelation.”

This has got to be the most bludgeoning cliche in all of food writing. The related “[food] is revelatory” is also heinous.

I just don’t believe that after eating truffles/pita bread/parmesan gelato/cauliflower puree, a food writer has ever leapt from his/her well-stuffed chair, run out into the street, and changed his/her life forever. Perhaps his/her first step might be to give up food writing?

I do believe there are moments when you’re eating something and you have a small epiphany — such as that wild strawberries, when picked on a hillside outside of Oslo, actually taste like artificial strawberry flavor, so that’s what the strawberry-flavor chemists were striving for in the first place. But, please, I did not shriek, “These strawberries are a revelation!” at my fellow berry-pickers.

Get a sense of perspective, people.