The latest fad from Britain’s top chefs has food critics foaming at the mouth. Chefs are using carbon dioxide and nitrogen to produce “cappuccino” toppings to their creations – including Parmesan cheese foam, mango “air” and ginger foam. Dishes topped by these concoctions can cost up to £25.

Food critics are rebelling, describing the toppings as pretentious and sometimes looking like “cuckoo spit”.

Fay Maschler, a leading restaurant critic, last week lashed out in print at what she called “chemistry set cooks”, while AA Gill, the Sunday Times critic, warned that too many new restaurants were choosing froth over substance.

Chefs remain unrepentant. Tony Flinn, chef at Anthony’s Restaurant in Leeds, says customers love his foams, such as the Parmesan on white onion risotto and roast tuna foam on an apple and pork belly ravioli, served as an amuse bouche between courses.

“Some joke and say this washing-up liquid tastes lovely, but it is part of the fun of eating,” he said. “People always knock things which are new. It is a typically English thing to do.”

Nuno Mendes, who runs the Bacchus restaurant in Hoxton, north London, serves red snapper tartare with a “dashi foam” made from Japanese fish soup. Past courses on the menu have included hot garlic foam on a langoustine dish.

“It has the texture of a bubble bath. The secret is to get it to the table quickly because it will collapse after three or four minutes,” he said.

Foam begins to subside as soon as it is formed, but the rate of deflation is variable. The smaller the bubbles, the slower the collapse.

Heston Blumenthal is the latest chef to add airs to his menu. He includes an oyster foam as part of a dish called The Sound of the Sea on the 20-course tasting menu, for £115 a head, at his Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire. It is meant to bring a flavour like a sudden whoosh of sea water into the mouth. Diners are asked to listen on an iPod to the sound of waves crashing while eating seafood. The oyster foam represents the “mist above the waves”.

The trend for creating exotic foams to add as toppings has been inspired by El Bulli on Spain’s Costa Brava, twice voted the world’s best restaurant. It retained its crown last month just ahead of the Fat Duck.

Its owner, Ferran Adria, takes six months out each year to devise new recipes and techniques. When it opens its doors, 8,000 gastro-pilgrims – chosen from up to 1m applications for reservations – are allowed to eat in the 50-seat restaurant.

Adria, who describes himself as a Picasso of the palate, created culinary foam or “espuma” using vegetables, soda siphons and liquid nitrogen. His diners can even enjoy a gin and tonic served as a foam in an egg cup.

“In the end, cuisine is senses and emotion. How much emotion does someone have with something he’s never tasted before? It’s incredible,” he said.

The spread of the innovation threatens to undermine it. Marc Wilkinson, chef and owner of Restaurant Fraiche at Oxton in the Wirral, uses nitrogen from a soda water siphon to create a smoked bacon foam that he serves with his latest dish of Loire guinea fowl as part of a £36 set menu.

But he said: “The concept and idea is great, but once it filters through to the masses there is a danger that the taste will be lost in the execution. You have to be careful that the foam does not collapse before it reaches the guest and looks like mucus.”

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