Trends-day Wednesday 6/25

For this week’s Trends-day Wednesday, I’m looking at food trends. Baum and Whiteman are international food and restaurant consultants (sounds like an amazing job to me), and they put together a list of 12 trends in the food industry for 2014. Since I like to give some attention to each trend, discussing 12 seems to be too much for one post, so I’m breaking it up into three posts. I will countdown the trends with 12-9 this week, 8-5 next week, and 4-1 the following week. I typically would give you a link to where I am getting my stories, but I don’t want you to cheat and look ahead, so I’m being mean and withholding that from you. I know if you really want to ruin the surprise, you could probably Google it, but that would take away all of the fun.

12. Mideast Cooking

I have always been a fan of Middle Eastern food. I find it aromatic and exotically flavorful. Of course, the word “exotic” here is completely relative. It’s only “exotic” because I have an American’s palate, and I wasn’t used to those flavor profiles when I first tried them.

This surge in Middle Eastern style food has been attributed to the relocation of people as they flee undesirable situations in Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. Zaatar, a specific type of spice, and pomegranate are popping up on menus more and more. Of course, as Americans are apt to do, the restaurants are putting their own American spin on some of the dishes, creating a type of Middle Eastern-American fusion.

Baum and Whiteman discuss several specific dishes that are becoming popular. However, one in particular caught my eye. Now that I am living in New Mexico, I see red and green chilies everywhere and in everything. Shug or shuk is a Yemenite dip that contains coriander, cumin, and red or green chilies. I would venture to guess the people of New Mexico might enjoy that one. I’d certainly like to try it. Even spice shops are getting into the mix. La Boîte à Epice, a well-known spice shop in New York, sells special top-secret spice mixes to world famous chefs like Eric Ripert and Daniel Boulud.

I’m looking forward to seeing more recipes and ideas on Middle Eastern foods and cuisine. What do you think? Are you adventurous enough to try new things?

11. Asian Flavors

Now we’re moving from the Mideast to the Far East. As I said before, Americans like to innovate by creating fusion cuisines. Of course this is reminiscent of the make-up of our country and the families here within. Most of us are a great mixture of cultures, so why not extend that to the food?

Chefs are finding interesting ways to include Asian flavors into their Western dishes. Asian flavors are full of umami components, and they can really enhance Western dishes that might be lacking in those flavors. (Now that I think about it, I could probably write an entire linguistic paper on the word umami… In the interest of not boring you, if you do not know what umami is or means, you should look it up. You might just learn something.) I’ve already discussed my feelings on sriracha and the whole sriracha mayo/sriracha aioli concept, but apparently other Asian food items, like kimchee, have also blown up in the Western world.

I love Asian flavors, but they are so powerful that I am hesitant to start adding them to everything and anything. What new Asian fusion foods would you want to try? A kimchee omelet? Actually, that sounds good…

10. “Eatertainment”

Eating at a restaurant appeals to all of your senses. Typically, you use taste and smell the most and the other senses are more subtly triggered. Well, now restaurants are looking to turn up the volume with different types of experiences.

A restaurant in Shanghai called Ultraviolet gives diners a truly unique experience at a very high cost. I’ll let Baum and Whiteman tell you about it in their own words.

“Avant garde restaurant Ultraviolet, in Shanghai, shanghais ten high-spending diners nightly to a secret room that radically shifts moods with each course ... uplights in the floor, 360-degree high-def projectors, swings in air temperature, four smell diffusers, 22 speakers, LEDs, waiters changing customers to suit the food. Chef-owner Paul Pairet calls it “psychotasting” ... you go from Zen to hell in 20 courses over four hours in a night of sensory integration. Oh, yes, the food’s pretty good.”

Other restaurants play with the humidity in the room or cause the tables to heat or cool or even vibrate the plates on cue. Some even use strange tableware to play with your psyche while you use them. For example, there are actually “cups with nipples” and “ball shaped spoons”. This idea comes from research which suggests that people perceive round shapes as being sweeter and jagged shapes as being bitter.

Other restaurants completely take away the stimulation of one sense so that your others are heightened. In Brooklyn, a restaurant serves meals in complete and utter silence, while other restaurants will serve their food in the dark.

I must admit, I would try one of these experiences once, but I have a feeling I will not enjoy it. I tend to be a creature of habit. Which of the things I discussed here appeals most to you? Would you eat at any of these unique restaurants?

9. Pop-ups, Food Fairs, and Single-item Restaurants

Pop-ups and food fairs are generally ways for people with business ideas to test out their products and dishes and concepts on a small scale in order to see if they might catch on and possibly become successful full-scale businesses. This is a brilliant idea and seems to suit the food industry the best. If a pop-up restaurant is wildly popular for the one or two nights it is open, then that could solidify a reputation and a clientele for a restaurant that is not even built yet. Conversely, a pop-up that does poorly, even if it has a solid concept, can utterly destroy a dream and idea. But it’s better to know that you have some things to work on and tweak before you spend a lot of time and money opening a restaurant that is doomed to fail.

I had no idea, but it seems that single-item restaurants are becoming popular and taking off. If you pick one item and you do it flawlessly, I imagine you would have a hit on your hands. The same thing happened with Cane’s in Baton Rouge. They only sell chicken fingers, but they do it so well and at such a good quality level, that it has exploded and become a staple of the state of Louisiana. They are now franchising to other states. In large cities, like Chicago and New York, restaurants have popped up that sell only baked potatoes or churros or hummus or biscuits. Baum and Whiteman do mention that if these items catch on, the big chains will follow suit and copy their ideas, and I imagine they will sell the products at a lower cost. Thus is the nature of capitalism… But the question is, do you see these single-item restaurants being able to survive in a smaller city? I would say, “yes”, just because of the example and precedent Cane’s set in Baton Rouge, but is it possible that was merely a fluke? Did it work simply because they sell greasy food that people want to eat after a night of imbibing a little too much?