The recent furore over a Melbourne cafe's 'deconstructed coffee' got us thinking about the whole phenomenon.
Jamila Rizvi started a storm in a coffee cup when she tweeted her disappointment at waiting 20 minutes for her order, only to be served up what was essentially a group of ingredients for her to piece together herself.
I bet she's not the only one unimpressed by this development -- imagine the poor kitchen hand dealing with this increase in dirty dishes.
And this isn’t an isolated incident -- another Newshub staffer was recently served a 'deconstructed soda' at Auckland cafe Little & Friday.
So what is deconstruction and how did it become so popular?
Deconstruction (not the literary theory forged by Jaques Derrida) emerged in the early nineties, but it’s really taken off recently. The aim is to change the form but not the basic nature of the food or drink.
Sarah Frizzell is one half of the The Lucky Taco eatery in Ponsonby, alongside her husband Otis.
She says they don’t yet serve deconstructed tacos -- but she’s thinking about it.
"I think people like to pick food apart bit by bit. I think even as kids, you like everything separate on your plate.
"Maybe it is because you reassemble it in your mouth and that is the exciting part," she says. "Maybe it is the visual aspect of it emerging on the plate.
"There is the Japanese saying, you eat with your eyes first. I think that is so true. I mean, I don’t want to eat something that looks shit."
She might have a point there actually.
So with this newly acquired knowledge, we decided to see if we could construct some deconstructed delights ourselves.
First we decided to try deconstructed burgers for dinner. It was a lot like any other time we made dinner, but we tried to make it look a bit prettier halfway through.
Then we thought, why limit ourselves to just food? Here's a deconstructed jumper. You might want to get to work on that one soon now it's getting a bit chilly.
Housing's a hot topic recently - here's a deconstructed version of an Auckland home. We're not sure how much this will help the current crisis though.
And then we thought that if it's good enough for cafes, why not newsrooms? Here's a deconstructed Newshub article ready to be pieced together according to your individual tastes.
Newshub.
