It’s that time of year again, when everyone and Bob’s uncle crank out a trends list.

We maintain a running list of food and beverage finds throughout the year. The ones with multiple entries are considered for our year-end Food Fads or Trends? list.

In 2009 and 2010, we easily identified Sweet 16 Trends (or Fads). This year it wasn’t so easy — we settled on 10.

Are they trends or fads, or just really good at bubbling to the top via marketing and mentions?

You decide…

Ingredients:

1. Rabbit

We joked in April about rabbit belly becoming the next hot trend. (Could “Beyond Pork Belly” be a trend? A good writer friend says lamb belly is the latest rage).

Back to the bunny, it turns out we weren’t too far off, but it wasn’t just the belly… it was the hindquarters and loin, too. Home cooks got in on the act, too, with more access to fresh rabbit through high-end butcher shops, grocery stores and sites such as Gilt Taste.

2. Harissa

We’re talking about the hot red chile condiment originating in Tunisia, not the Arab soupy lamb and wheat dish that goes by the same name. Restaurants, such as FnB in Scottsdale paired the spicy relish with vegetables for a kick, and others were marinating meats with harissa, such as Barley Swine in Austin.

3. Kimchi

This fermented cabbage dish is the first thing we think of when thinking about Korean food. We spotted kimchi (also spelled kimchee) at farmers’ markets and on restaurant menus and in cookbooks. And of course, the Kimchi Chronicles launched on PBS this year, featuring Marja Vongerichten.

4. Black foods

Rice? Check…Forbidden rice. Lentils? Check…black beluga. Pasta? Check..squid ink. Garlic? Check…fermented black garlic. Crackers? Check… blackened with charcoal powder. We did a round-up of black foods earlier this year.

Beverages:

5. Bitters

A common theme from planet cocktail was the rise of bitters, from the classic standards Angostura and Peychaud’s, to small batch bitters made by individual bartenders. The book Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All pushed the fever for bitters even higher. Home “pharmacists” are experimenting, too, including a Phoenix-based engineer-turned-weekend bitters warrior, who documents his experiments on Facebook at AZ Bitters Lab.

 Media:

6. Online food magazines

Print Gourmet magazine may have kicked the bucket but it lives on (sort of) online as Gourmet Live. Other print magazines moved from paper to internet, including Culinary Thymes, while others began media life online, such as Organic Connections. We expect to see more food magazines with online only issues.

7. Culinary apps

Sure, there were culinary apps before 2011, but this year the floodgates opened as everyone got in on the “there’s an app” for that. Want to know where (and what) chefs eat? There’s an app for that. It’s called Chefs Feed. Martha Stewart’s Whole Living smoothies, Baking with Dorie Greenspan, and The Professional Chef from the Culinary Institute of America are just a few that launched this year.

8. Cookbooks

Printed cookbooks had a banner year, and two themes that seemed prolific were chefs cooking at home (Jean-George Vongerichten, Ferran Adriá, and John Besh) and bloggers-turned cookbook authors (Lisa Fain of the Homesick Texan, Matt Armendariz of Matt Bites and Jessie Oleson of CakeSpy.)

Desserts:

Photo courtesy of Our Feeding Frenzy Blog

9. Popsicles & Paletas

The Zoku pop machine hit home kitchens and entrepreneurs like Fru Fru Pops hit the farmers’ market, cooling us down in the process. Mexican popsicles (paletas) were big, too, as Chandler, AZ based Paletas Betty opened a second location in Tempe, AZ. Our Feeding Frenzy blog spent a good bit of the summer tempting us with very grown-up cocktail ice pops, ensuring everyone got sweet relief from the summer heat wave.

Other:

10. German Pub Grub

We don’t have solid data on this one, but we feel it. Maybe it’s because of the fabulous alpine cuisine at Grüner in Portland. Or maybe it’s the continuing rise in “gastropub” popularity (Meddlesome Moth in Dallas, Citizen Public House in Scottsdale). For whatever reason, we think there’s room for gastropubs who focus on updated German classics (charcuterie, terrines, potatoes, sausages, pickled vegetables, etc.)

Bonus round: Things we can’t seem to get enough of

Burgers

Oh, America, will you ever tire of burgers? Apparently not, especially if said burger is piled high with fried things and there’s a big honking knife stuck in it.

Southern food

Bon Appetit magazine anointed Husk, a Southern restaurant in Charleston, the best in the land. Countless cookbooks on Southern food emerged, including Basic to Brilliant by Virginia Willis. Grits, cornbread, and fried okra spread from sea to shining sea.

Small plates

Few restaurants can survive serving only small plates, but it’s rare for a modern American restaurant to not have a least a smattering of small plates. A few of those doing it well include FnB in Scottsdale, Ned Ludd in Portland, and Barley Swine in Austin.

Related:

2010 Sweet 16 Food Fads or Trends?

2009 Sweet 16 Food Fads or Trends?

Tags: bitters, black foods, food fads, food trends, food trends 2011, German Pub food, harissa, kimchi, popsicles, rabbit
Posted in News & Nibbles | 2 Comments »

Can’t bear to read another 2011 food trends list? Not to worry. I take a slightly different approach.

Instead of predicting the future, I take a look at what just happened. Call it a year-in-review.

What ingredients and dishes did restaurants focus on this year? Are they really trends or food fads? That’s up to you to decide.

I’ve whittle the lengthy list down to 16.  Last year’s Sweet 16 explored salted caramel, foie gras desserts and Staub serving vessels.

What’s on this year’s list? Read on to find out.

Ingredients:

1. Mangalitsa — Bacon is for common folk (so mainstream it’s ridiculous, if still tasty and popular), but the fooderati were rooting for the wooly pig in 2010. Restaurants like The French Laundry (Yountville, CA) and Binkley’s (Cave Creek, AZ) turn this Hungarian, cold-weather loving pig into more than the sum of its parts. Chefs say the taste is sweeter, more succulent than other heritage breeds — in a word? Superior.

2. Shishito peppers — These Japanese peppers became the darling of bar menus because of their ease of preparation. The skins are thin, meaning the peppers can be pan-seared whole and garnished with just sea salt and a spritz of lemon for an easy appetizer. We’ve seen them on menus from Seattle to Texas, prepared with just olive oil and lemon to a finishing glaze of robust soy and ginger.

3. Radishes — The common radish made a comeback in 2010, with a little help from its heirloom friends: Breakfast, Icicle, Black Spanish and Easter Egg radishes. Grüner (Portland), one of GQ’s 2010 top 10 restaurants, plates one of the prettiest radish plates: thin slices fanned over an entire plate, topped with micro greens and drizzled with a caper vinaigrette. And we saw plenty of roasted radishes, too.

4. Brown butter — You can’t look at a menu from any fine dining restaurant without seeing brown butter. Usually, it’s paired with butternut squash and sage, either as a side dish or a pasta main course dish, or served over seafood. But browned butter made an appearance on the dessert menu this year, too, like New York’s Le Bernardin (brown butter ice cream) and Phoenix’s Coup des Tartes (brown butter pear tart).

Dishes:

5. Pretzels — Both as the old ball park standard and as soft bread, pretzels tipped the popularity scales this year, and not just in German or Alpine themed restaurants (although that’s certainly where they started). Retail bakers jumped on the pretzel bandwagon, too. I even had pretzel bread offered on an international flight this year.

6. Charcuterie — Restaurants making their own charcuterie started well before 2010, but several hit their stride this year, offering more than the standard pâté. As it takes more than a year to make some types of salumi and charcuterie, I think it’s safe to say we’ll see even more next year…as long as health departments don’t catch wind of it, that is. For that reason, I think I’ll not name any names.

7. Poutine — Quebec’s classic comfort dish — French fries smothered in cheese curds and brown gravy — crossed the the border this year much to the delight of anyone with taste buds. New York’s T-Poutine restaurant serves eight different versions, and half a dozen restaurants in Portland serve the “fries-as-a-meal” dish. Even Animal (the award-winning L.A. restaurant) serves an oxtail gravy and cheddar version.

8. House made pickled vegetables — Beyond traditional pickles, many restaurants applied vinegar and spices to practically every vegetable coming out of the ground. We saw pickled green beans, celery, asparagus, onions, cauliflower, carrots, and of course, the humble cucumber.

9. Hot dogs –  We’ve lost count of the number of food trucks across the country specializing in the gussied up ballpark fare, but now restaurants are getting dog fever, too. In Phoenix, two fine dining restaurants have embraced the haute dog: Cork in Chandler and noca in Central Phoenix. Suffice it to say that we’ve not reached saturation of the hot dog yet (or, apparently, the burger).

Desserts:

flickr photo © by vsimon

10. Pudding — Many of the ingredients and dishes on this list are connected to the overall trend of comfort food and back-to-basics (s’mores, radishes, hot dogs, etc). Add pudding to the list of big fat hugs from neighborhood restaurants. FnB’s butterscotch pudding reached cult status this year, while others just reached us with pure silky love (chocolate and peanut butter from Modern Steak). Portland has Pudding on the Rice, an all-pudding dessert shop and Austin jiggles with the Gourmet Pudding food trailer. I bet a restaurant near you serves pudding, too.

11. Pie — Cupcake lovers got their frosting all in a tizzy this year when the trend masters said that “pie was the new cupcake.” Is it? Perhaps. How can you not love pie? Pastry chefs are putting the all-American staple back on the menu, some dressing it up, others dressing it down. Phoenix’s Beckett’s Table won a Phoenix New Times celebrity chef bake-off with its homey fig and pecan pie earlier this year. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if we see pie shops open across the country in 2011, either.

12. S’mores — From already assembled to make-it-yourself-tableside, s’mores hit dessert menus in a big way this year, from Portland’s Ned Ludd to Frank & Albert’s at the Arizona Biltmore to Eve in Chicago.

Beverages:

13. Latin beverages –  Horchata (rice milk and cinnamon), agua frescas (fruit-based drinks) and sangria (wine infused with fruit) have always populated Mexican and Latin themed restaurant menus, and now they’re crossing over to fusion restaurants, like Zengo’s in New York. Batidos (think milkshakes with a Latin twist) aren’t new to Latin countries, but they made a big splash this year, mostly on the East Coast, both with and without alcohol.

14. Smoothies — I’m sneaking this on the list because I think my 95 daily smoothies (announced via Twitter) made people think about the slushy beverage in a whole new light. I opened my pantry and got creative. My favorite smoothie might have been the Bing cherries with lavender and pink peppercorn. Or maybe it was my peanut butter and grape smoothie, that tasted just like a PB & J without the bread.

Restaurants:

15. Late Night Dining — New York City is seeing a resurgence in late-night dining and by late night, we’re talking after midnight. In Phoenix, another “late-night” offering came of age, and by Phoenix standards, late night is after 10 p.m. I wrote a story for Edible Phoenix in February profiling two such restaurants, Petite Maison’s “staff meals” and FnB’s “Industry Meals.” Since then, three other restaurants have expanded their hours on certain nights. Now, Tuesday through Saturday, Phoenicians can saddle up to an independent, chef-driven restaurant for late night cheap eats: Tuesday – Crudo; Wednesday – noca; Thursday – Posh; Thursday through Saturday – Petite Maison; and Saturday – FnB.

16. Gastropubs — Meddlesome Moth opened in Dallas this year to great fanfare as a gastropub for hipsters (it ranked #2 in D Magazine’s top 10 new restaurants). New York may think gastropubs are nothing new (Spotted Pig, Rabbit in the Moon) but the rest of the country is playing catch up. What is a gastropub anyway? Is it a bar that serves above average food? Yes, that, but more, too. It must have a serious craft beer component. Scottsdale and Phoenix have two gastropubs slated to open after the first of the year (Citizen Public House, LGO Public House).

Other notables: Other things popped on the radar, too, like the rise in vegetarian dishes in non-vegetarian restaurants, and the gluten-free surge that’s resulted in restaurants designating GF on appropriate menu items. I noticed a rise in foraged foods, too. Ten years ago when I worked at The Boulders Resort, we had a forager on staff. His full time job was to find unique foodstuffs, both local and not. Today’s forager is looking for wild ingredients grown within a restaurant’s radius.

I could keep going but I’d rather hear from you. What other trends or fads did you see this year? And, if you’re into predicting the future, what do you think is in store for 2011?

Tags: 2010 food trends, brown butter, food fads, gastropubs, late night dining, Mangalitsa, pie, pudding, radishes, s'mores, shisito peppers, smoothies
Posted in News & Nibbles | 6 Comments »

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