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Food

This Restaurant Banned Avocado from Its Menu for Being Too Basic

“Avocado should complement dishes, and the team behind the restaurant believes it is time to share the limelight with some other culinary stars.”
Photo via Flickr user Dee Bamford

At this point, avocados are inescapable. You can't throw one of their oversized seeds without hitting something related to the world's most overexposed healthy fat. The internet is littered with slideshows for SEVEN LIT AF AVOCADO TOAST RECIPES, Starbucks has added a $1 packet of avocado spread to its refrigerated section and just yesterday, I had to stop myself from physically assaulting a woman wearing a "Let's Avo-Cuddle" t-shirt. That's why London eatery Firedog should be commended—if not just all-out knighted—for its anti-avocado efforts.

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Firedog, a new Aegean restaurant in the capital city, has instituted a complete avocado ban, excluding the fruit from any appearances on its menu. "Our mission is to reinvigorate the morning dining scene in London, which has done avocado to death, and we're frankly bored of seeing it on every breakfast and brunch menu," George Notley, Firedog's executive head chef, said.

READ MORE: Our Obsession with Guacamole Has Created an Avocado Black Market

Notley means it, regardless of how popular avocados might be. "People are very shocked when they first hear [about the ban] as avocado is such a popular fruit to have for breakfast, brunch and lunch, but they do quickly forget when they sample the unique menu," Notley told MUNCHIES. "Avocado should complement dishes, and the team behind the restaurant believes it is time to share the limelight with some other culinary stars."

Instead of endless variations on underripe fruit, Firedog's all-day breakfast menu features less-ubiquitous Middle Eastern favorites like grilled halloumi, crispy sujuk sausage, and a truly impressive breakfast meze that might buckle your table legs before you finish. (It was inspired by the Su'dan restaurant in Alaçati, a Turkish beach town; now doesn't that sound more exciting than trying to drag a chunk of avocado across a piece of toast?)

That's not to say that Firedog is entirely anti-hipster: its website has links to its own in-house Spotify playlist and, as Conde Nast Traveler points out, it continues to serve other "trendy" foods like matcha. But, good lord, at least Firedog isn't contributing to the manic avocado obsession that has overtaken Western society.

According to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, America's annual avocado consumption has increased from 1.1 pound per person per year in 1989 to seven pounds per capita in 2014. Avocados are just as overdone in Firedog's own United Kingdom: Last year, The Telegraph reported that Britains were buying more avocados than oranges, for the first time ever.

Notley said that the ban has no set end-date. "[It will continue] as long as Firedog's other favorite flavors and ingredients are around," she said. "Long live the pomegranate and beetroot."

Long live literally everything else, indeed.