Make no mistake about it, an interloper has hijacked the tables at Craft. A new style of wine glass has swept over hip metropolitan eateries like the Santa Anas and these impostors must be called out. They are everywhere. Suddenly, the world of haute wine glasses previously lead by Riedel has had a mid-life crisis. The wine glass has traded up, gotten skinnier legs, more defined arms and a less rounded midsection. You know you’ve seen them. You’ve probably even bought them, discarding your old standbys as heirlooms for your college-bound children. I wouldn’t be so bothered by this wine glass du jour had every cool restaurant from LA to New York not fallen all over themselves to adopt them which can now be seen in episodes from Gossip Girl to Dirty Sexy Money. Before you think I’m crazy for ranting about wine glasses as if this will have any impact on my life whatsoever, I laugh at what they really stand for – the latest, coolest thing that if you don’t have them at your next dinner party your guests will deem you out of the culture loop forever the hostess that buys their tableware at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Every now and then trends in tableware spring up – square plates the size of your living room anyone? But we can always count on the wine glass to hold the fort. They have always been traditional save for the occasional artistic etching. Elegant, beautiful, full of inviting pleasure poured into a perfectly rounded goblet. Now they’ve gotten a very modern upgrade and, well, they’re just not wine glasses. They look as cliché as I’d image the homes of the people that buy them – minimal furniture, a good helping of steel tones, tons of Domino and Architectural Digest magazines, well-lit obscure art and lots of black. So you sleek new glasses posing as bordeaux, chardonnay and cabernet carriages, I hope you are banished back to the room of hip design so that we don’t have to spend another $1000 dollars trying to impress our colleagues with the knowledge of what’s in and what’s out. Come to think of it, since every restaurant has them these days, I wonder if the good ‘ol originals can now be found on the cheap!

See you on e-bay.