Requiem for relish
Mcdonald’s in Canada has never offered it. Burger King no longer carries it. And Wendy’s serves it in those little packets in the condiment stand — not as a regular ingredient in its hamburgers.
It is relish: that sticky sweet, monster green staple of childhood.
And it may be going the way of the dodo.
While mustard has been “upscaled” into a gourmet product that comes in dozens of varieties and ketchup is still the mother of all condiments, conventional relish is losing ground. “It’s not something that has been part of our menu or has come up in any of our limited-time offers that I can recall,” said Cameron Loopstra, senior marketing manager for Burger King Canada. He’s been with the company nine years. “Our restaurants can order it. But demand is so low from our guests. It’s just not a condiment or flavour profile that resonates with them.” A recent New York Times article speculated the decline may be related to the relative difficulty of serving relish in the kind of large pumptype containers favoured by fastfood restaurants. Among upscale burger joints, relish is highly controversial, said Greg Brown, owner of Woody’s Burger Bar & Grill in Etobicoke. “You get some places that say relish is for sausages and then they refuse to serve it. In the burger world, there’s a debate. Is it good, is it bad? Are you flawed because you have it on your menu?” Brown said. Toppings at Woody’s, named for its hardwood grill, range from guacamole to gorgonzola but the restaurant also offers the more traditional ketchup, mustard, relish, lettuce, onion and tomato combination because “the older crowd likes it,” he said. Relish as a topping on burgers at restaurants has declined over the past five years, according to data supplied by the NPD Group Inc., a leading market research company. Relish is used on just 11 per cent of burgers now, down from15 per cent in 2007, the firm said. Meanwhile, more exotic items, such as mush- rooms and steak sauce, are making gains.
However, when it comes to hotdogs, relish continues to rank as the third-most popular topping after mustard and ketchup, the data showed.
Even in grocery store aisles, relish appears to be losing out to competitors.
Home consumption of relish is “softening,” according to NPD data. On average, Canadians reported eating relish just six times in the most recent 12-month period, down from 7.5 times in the previous 12 months.
The sharpest declines over the past decade have been among children under 18 and adults between the ages of 35 and 44. The only group holding steady is the one over age 55, the data showed.
Food writer Dana Mccauley, the culinary director at Janes Family Foods, said consumers’ taste buds are becoming more “ethnically sophisticated.”
Every spring, Heinz puts out its “picnic pack,” a trio of squeezable ketchup, mustard and relish, each in a 575-millilitre bottle.
“People buy them and take them to the cottage. Last spring I didn’t because I thought, ‘What am I going to do with all that relish?’ ” Mccauley asked.
Instead, we’re reaching for things such as corn-based salsa, she suggested.
Conventional relish is also facing stiff competition from the local food movement.
Stasis Preserves on Roncesvalles Ave. store sells a range of relishes, chutneys and jams, using ingredients sourced from farmers’ markets. Its sweet bell pepper relish, made with warm spices and a touch of molasses, works on a variety of foods, from fish to brie — even a burger — said owner Julian Katz.