The New York Times Kim Severson recently tweeted a provocative question: asking which food writing words and phrases people would like to ban. She started with calling a restaurant an eatery (I'm guilty of that one) and calling vegetables 'veggies' (which I avoid doing). Several other food writers chimed in with words they would like to see disappear.

David Wondrich chimed in with 'sammie/sammich', while Kat Kinsman added a list of items including 'craveworthy'. Other contenders for the dustbin included 'foodie' (plenty of agreement there), and 'tucking into'. Some of the replies were thoughtful, such as the person who said that using "mom and pop" as "a generic term to describe small, independent restaurants. not an outright ban but maybe a more thoughtful consideration of how "elevate" can be more of a classist than helpful description of someone's cooking," to which Severson agreed, responding with "What if it's a mom-and-mom restaurant?"

Dozens more words were offered to be placed on the chopping block, with only a few dissenters to the concept. One person responded with "I have to say I am, and always have been, against the banning of any words available to the writer. Let them phrase as they may."

As someone who has written about food nearly every day for eight years, I have sympathy for people who choose some of these words. I tend not to use 'foodie' and 'veggies', but the notion that I shouldn't use 'eatery' is more difficult to accept. When you are discussing restaurants it's annoying to keep saying 'restaurant' over and over, and you can only mention the name of a specific place so many times before it starts to sound weird. Establishment can work, but that sounds stuffy.

I hope our readers will forgive us if we overuse a word or two here on the EYB blog. Some days it's a struggle to find an adjective that fits when describing a food, and so 'delicious' may end up as the default option even though a better word may exist. But I think it's safe to say you won't see us describing a sandwich as a 'sammie'.