As part of Seattle Met ‘s Best Restaurants feature, we asked dozens of Seattle chefs and restaurateurs to give us their take on trends, customers, competition—pretty much everything under the restaurant sun. What we got was an earful of juicy insider insight. We’ll be posting some of the responses in the coming weeks.

Happy hour is a topic near and dear to this blog. It’s an occasion to get tips while sampling a plate of this and a swill of that. What’s not to love? If you’re on the industry end of things, a lot, apparently. When asked to name the worst recent bar and restaurant trend, right there at the top was happy hour. (So was bacon cocktails, but who can argue with that? Not us.) When pressed further on the topic, those polled responded with "You have to do it to survive," "dumbed-down menus, " or "great if you’re single, twentysomething, or looking to get laid."

What else topped their list? More choice responses below:

"The food truck thing."
"Anything to do with foam."
"Cheap at all costs: It limits how we can treat our employees."
"Chefs who open so many restaurants they can’t focus on one in particular."
"Deification of chefs."
"‘I’m a foodie’ is one of the most annoying things I’ve ever heard in my life."
"Pork belly is played out. I mean, I have it on my menu right now but I think it’s definitely past its prime."
"Reconstituted olives that look like eyeballs."