Vir Sanghvi wrote a piece this week that made me want to stand up and applaud. My grandmother, if she were still with us, would have read it, nodded, gone back to stirring her ragu without saying a word. She didn't need to say it. The food said it.

The argument is simple and correct. Modern restaurant culture is increasingly obsessed with flashy presentation over flavor. You know what I'm talking about. The deconstructed everything. The foam that tastes like nothing. The plate with three dots of sauce and a single scallop sitting on what appears to be a decorative stone.

Sanghvi's piece names insect ingredients as one of the trends overtaking restaurant menus, and that one stopped me for a moment. Here is my problem with it. When I see insects on a menu at a place chasing stars, I can't help wondering whether they are there because the chef truly believes in that flavor or because they make the diner gasp and reach for the phone. That is my reaction, not something Sanghvi said. But it is the question I keep asking.

And the answer matters. I have eaten insects. In Oaxaca, chapulines toasted with garlic and chile, squeezed with lime, tucked into a fresh tortilla. They were delicious because they belonged to that place, that tradition, that moment. When a Michelin-chasing restaurant puts ants on a tart because it sounds provocative, that is not the same thing. In my opinion, that is a press release on a plate.

The problem isn't ambition. Ambition in the kitchen is beautiful. The problem is when the visual becomes the entire point and the taste becomes secondary, an afterthought, something that just needs to be good enough to justify the photo. I have watched this trend build for years and it breaks my heart a little more every time I sit down to a beautiful plate of nothing.

Good food does not need to be expensive or complicated. It needs care and patience. I have said this a hundred times and I will say it a hundred more because it is the truest thing I know. My grandmother's ragu had four ingredients and it would make you weep. Not because she plated it on hand-thrown ceramic from a studio in Umbria. Because she stood at that stove for four hours and she paid attention.

Feeding people well is an act of generosity first and technique second. When a restaurant forgets that, when the kitchen becomes a stage instead of a home, the food suffers. Maybe not on Instagram. But on the tongue, where it actually matters.

I'll take the gas station taco over the twelve-course tasting menu where eleven courses exist purely to be photographed. At least the taco was made by someone who wanted you to feel full and happy.