Two nights of James Beard Awards, two nights of of Chicago doing very, very poorly. I’m afraid this might have been expected. We’ve been hyped too long, and now it’s time for the other side of the buzz: backlash.

There have been hints that this was coming. The fact that Food & Wine didn’t have a single Chicago chef in its Best New Chefs issue was not promising. And when I saw that The New York Times Style Magazine had Chicago on its cover, I really started to get worried. NYT’s consistent, six-months-behind-the-times coverage is a harbinger of death for any trend; when I see it is hyping, say, board shorts, I know to put my board shorts away.

I’m not prepared to leave Chicago, though, or even to lower my expectations for what our city can do with food…or art, or fashion, or anything else. Neither should the rest of the world. But as a city, we should brace ourselves for a year or two of our food scene being overlooked. There’s been too much talk, too many articles, too much fawning—and way too much Alinea. (I  mean, a movie? Really?)

These things are cyclical, of course. It was just a couple of years ago that GQ was calling Chicago our country’s culinary equivalent to Barcelona. This month, it has moved on to Portland—despite the fact that Portland was supposed to be our country’s mecca ten years ago. So it’s just a matter of time before we start getting scrutinized again. In the meantime, plenty of restaurants and chefs will be overlooked, only to be “discovered” by outsiders a year or so later. Then the articles, the awards, the movies, they’ll all come trickling back. And Chicago will once again be the Best! Food! City! in America!…For now!