No more honest cooking, please
There's an expression that, if it had a physical form, would already be in semantic intensive care: honest cuisine. I thought of this after receiving, in a single week, ten press releases from restaurants and chefs whose work was defined exactly that way.
According to the Royal Spanish Academy, honesty is defined as that which is decent, fair, and reasonable, as acting with integrity and probity. In other words, honesty is not a texture, a level of doneness, a culinary technique, nor does it depend on using local products or promoting an indigenous community. It is an ethical category.
Two problems then emerge. The first, more subtle but important, is semantic, since cooking, as a practice or as the result on a plate, cannot be inherently honest. It has no will or moral compass: the tomato doesn't lie, the hake doesn't have a blind ego, a fried dish doesn't evade taxes. What can be honest is the cook, the restaurateur, or the values of the project they uphold. And, well, it's known that quite often, in some kitchens that present themselves as "honest," those who run them aren't so honest after all.
Among these are restaurants that preach short supply chains, sustainability, proximity, and local sourcing while paying suppliers in sixty days, diluting tips, or maintaining staff in questionable working conditions. The aesthetics of their menu may be outstanding, the flavor distinctive, the narrative impeccable, but what if the practice isn't? At that point, the concept ceases to be a culinary description and becomes, simply, a false slogan, because honesty isn't just declared; it's practiced off the plate as well.
In the culinary world, the label "honest cuisine" is often used to describe a cooking style: simple, straightforward dishes, without technical artifice or unnecessary embellishments. A cuisine that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. That idea—of a clear, unpretentious cuisine—is perfectly defensible. The problem arises when the concept shifts from the form of the dish to a supposed moral virtue of the project.
So perhaps it would be wise to start with something more basic: using words well. Because language not only describes reality, but also constructs it. And when moral adjectives are transformed into gastronomic marketing, what erodes is not the dish, but the very meaning of words and, therefore, trust. Perhaps what many mean when they say "honest cuisine" is something more modest: straightforward cuisine, without unnecessary pretension, without tricks to impress. Cuisine that doesn't promise more than it delivers.
That has a name, and it's not honesty.
