New Food Trends 2015


At the end of every year, platoons of food professionals -- consultants, chefs, writers and research firms -- race to predict the trends that will influence foodies all over America and ergo the world. According to Carol Tice from Forbes, the forecast released in mid-November by Baum+ Whiteman international restaurant consultants, was "one of the most fascinating." You can check out their full report of 11 dining trends plus 22 hot restaurant buzzwords for 2015 here.

Although I am married to Mr. Whiteman, his prognostications were unknown to me until they were released on Nov. 11th. The trends sit in telling categories: how the importance of technology will profoundly change the way restaurants function; how the notion of authenticity has less relevance, and how our lust for new and different has resulted in "restless palate syndrome" -- meaning that we can't leave simple food alone. One upon a time we liked salty, sweet, spicy, smoky, fatty and bitter flavors -- but now we want them all at once. In other words, "too much ain't enough."

The report, picked up by an Arabic newspaper, focuses on the importance of hummus, which Whiteman says, is probably the most mispronounced word in our country's food vocabulary. It gobbles up shelf space in our supermarkets because of a profusion of flavors added to what simply is a chickpea dip eaten in Israel and Arab countries. It now comes in dizzying variations including red pepper, chimichurri, lemongrass-chili and even chocolate mousse! (I've recently discovered a hummus ice cream in Tel Aviv).


They also note in their predictions that honey is being "enhanced" with ghost peppers; that bourbon is being flavored with honey and chili pepper or with pumpkin pie spices; that while the fixation of everything-bacon may be abating, now there's 'ndjua, a light-up-your-mouth spreadable sausage from Calabria that's finding its way onto pasta, melted over pork chops, even blended into vinaigrettes as sauces for fish. "If bold flavors are a trend" they say, "this eye-stinging, red-peppered mushy salami is next year's bold flavor."

Do strawberries taste sweeter on a black plate or a white plate? On a square plate or a round plate? Their forecast about "neurogastronomy" -- how your mind and body can be manipulated to enhance how you sense and taste food --is required reading. So is their comical rant about overpriced avocado.

Among their predictions: The death of tipping, and a reduction in the vast earnings gap between tipped waiters and low-paid cooks and dishwashers; fine dining chefs ditching flowers, linens, reservation systems and expensive china, instead going downscale to develop fast-casual restaurants; insects as food as we search for renewable sources of proteins; savory ice creams and yogurts as consumers realize how much sugar they're getting in sweetened cold treats; the war on waste is gaining traction; pistachios will be the nut of the year; authentic Jewish delis and also Jewish-ethnic mashups; savory waffles and waffle sandwiches; matcha (green tea powder) in fancy beverages and even seafood stocks and sauces; night markets, building on food truck rodeos, growing around the country with multi-ethnic festivals that bring thousands to riverfronts and public squares.

In their trend called "Soda Fountain Crashes the Bar," Baum+Whiteman sees childhood treats boozed up as adult shakes and smoothies with bourbon, gin, Frangelico, Galliano, Chartreuse.

Even coconut and cucumber waters, promoted as somehow being "purer," are being overlaid (or adulterated) with flavors like coffee and mango and with energy-boosting ingredients. Now maple water and birch sap are being tested.

Finally, clever computer programs now allow high-end restaurants to sell tickets for dinner rather than take reservations. Eating out could become as hateful as dealing with the airlines, the consultants say, with cancellation penalties and price shifting based upon demand for seats or time of day.

My adds? Cabbage. Food as medicine. Page oranges from Florida. Tahina is the new mayonnaise. It will come in as many colors (and flavors) as a box of crayons. See you in 2015.

You can also check out the National Restaurant Association's list for the coming year, Carol Tice's report from Forbes, and this article from Cosmopolitan.

Mixed-up Menu Trends

JB Every month or so I look forward to receiving the "events publication" from the James Beard House in New York City. Part booklet, part magazine, not only is it a gastronomic "look-see" into the minds of chefs and what they're thinking, but also a good indication of what may be cropping up on menus in your own zip code. Keeping in mind that cooking at the Beard House requires a certain amount of performance art and culinary high-wire acts, the offerings are complex and sometimes over-the-top. Yet, I'm fascinated by the ingredients I've never heard of (yes, I just admitted that), grateful for a new technique or idea, and sometimes baffled by some of the crazy-mixed up combinations.

Nonetheless, a read of the menus to be cooked by myriad chefs from all over the country provides an "instagram" sweep of America's culinary landscape. There's almost a dinner every day at the Beard House, with chefs telling their stories through the narrative of the menu, somewhere in the USA.


A few new ideas: There's "lambcetta" (I imagine that's a riff on pancetta but who knows), white barbecue sauce, cold fried chicken torchon, cider aspic, black sesame panna cotta with yuzu, sweet chestnut-filled ravioli with warm English custard, brisket bourguignon (with lamb belly confit and quinoa).




What does it all mean? Some of the wanton (not wonton!) creativity that began in the 1970s was expressed on menus in language that read like shopping lists, where every ingredient in a dish was revealed. The trend continues today. And while it is a way for chefs to differentiate themselves from others, the menus have a sense of gastronomic sameness -- with little sense of place, identity or ethnicity. This is merely an observation and not a judgment for it is what we have come to expect of our chefs and their menus. "Wow me," we say. And for the most part, this is what the chefs are doing. Frozen parsnips, anyone?

If you're lucky enough to be in New York in March or April, or anytime really, you should try one of the Beard House dinners. You'll be dropping into a wondrous food community and share a bit of the past... and the future.

Eating Your Way Through 2013

nyeThis has been a year of great upheaval, transition and growth for the planet, and for many of you this week may be a time for personal reflection and resolution-making.  I, for one, have promised myself to meditate daily, spend more time with my family, shop more carefully, entertain more often, and eat more mindfully.  Some of that has to do with paying attention to the upcoming trends this year.  Although it may be goofy to say, (I mean the word gourmet is so retro), "budget gourmet" restaurants -- hipster places with cutting-edge food that 30-something's can afford -- are sprouting up faster than you can chew a mouthful of kale (which is everywhere.) "Farm-to-Bar" -- if you're looking for future flavors then sidle up to your nearest artisan boozerie.  You will find fruits, vegetables, fresh herbal syrups, zested citrus bitters -- all house-made -- lining the bar top and perfuming your drinks.  I now make my own chamomile vodka (from fresh chamomile flowers) every spring and store in it the freezer.  A smart bartender will invent his/her own signature/locavore V-8.


Feasts for sharing:  Nose-to-tail dinners -- whole roasted pigs, lambs, etc. for a group of gorgers.  For example Momofuku's Korean "bo ssam" family-style format includes a dozen oysters, a whole roasted pork shoulder, kimchee and condiments. Price? $200.


The ancient flavors of Jerusalem:  Check out the fabulous new cookbook "Jerusalem" by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, and the new "Middleterranean" cooking (a hybrid of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines) in restaurants such as New York's Taboon and Philadelphia's Zahav.

The culinary wizardry of young Asian chefs forging a new identity: check out Nancy Matsumoto's riveting article in the Atlantic.



Prediction:  Congee (with lots of mix-ins and add-ons -- and not just for breakfast.)

If you're interested in the most ambitious and erudite trends list around, check out Michael Whiteman's prognostications at  (He's my husband but I'm really objective here.)  He, with his partner, the late Joe Baum, created some of the world's largest grossing and most magical restaurants (the Rainbow Room, Windows on the World, and the Big Kitchen -- the world's first fast food court.)  Michael was also the founding editor of Nation's Restaurant News -- still going strong.   He can nose a trend as deeply as a truffle pig can hunt in Perigord.


Here's a healthy new recipe to get started:

Rigatoni with kale, chicken sausage & black olives



Why Bread is No Longer Rising

With time on my hands this week, worrying and wondering about loved ones in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, I was struck by a fascinating web post: That, as a country, we’re consuming sharply declining amounts of wheat products -- less bread and rolls, less wheat-based breakfast cereals, fewer English muffins and even fewer wheat tortillas.  Sales of bread loaves are down 11.3% over a recent five-year period -- and falling, even as our population grows. Given the vast numbers of Big Macs, Subway sandwiches and Domino's pizzas we buy every day, these data, from Food Navigator USA, seemed counterintuitive to me. Since our national waistlines aren't shrinking, we must be eating more of something else, so I began to wonder where the replacement calories are coming from. Three large trends reveal the answers: A change in how we shop for food; big ethnic shifts in eating habits away from meat-and-potato diets and an explosion of endless snacking.

Start with snacking: Granola bar sales were up 16 percent in the same period (and still rising), so that's one place where oats clearly is replacing wheat -- a packaged snack trumps a sandwich.

In addition, a recently released 2013 food and beverage forecast by international restaurant consultants Baum+Whiteman talks about the "snackification of America" -- noting that snacks now account for about one-in-five eating occasions, and that we've become a nation of serial munchers seeking foods that are portable. "If it fits in your car's cup holder, if you can eat it with one hand, or better yet, two fingers ... then it's being tested in (restaurant) chains' R&D kitchens," they say.

Another study, by Rabobank, noted that all packaged snack bar sales -- consisting mostly of energy, nutrition, granola/muesli, and fruit bars -- have almost doubled in the last ten years. These may sound "healthy" but by and large they're laden with sugar -- which tells me a bit more about where those extra calories are coming from.

Equally important, we've gradually been abandoning the archipelago of shelving in the center of our supermarkets, steering our shopping carts around the edges, where we find vivid fresh products as opposed to cardboard packages -- and this trend is accelerating among younger people (who've gotten the eat-better message) and among single people across the board. So it's down with Cheerios and Fruit Loops and up with carrots and broccoli, chicken and salmon.

The folks at ConAgra, where they sell grains by the carload, told the newsletter Food Navigator that supermarkets are "suffering from 50 shades of beige as ... we shift from a meat-and-potatoes European diet to a more modern, colorful, multi-textured, multi-flavored diet influenced by Asian and Latino food."

Aha! In addition to oats, we're buying more rice and more corn-based products because that's what Asians and Latinos like to eat -- and, nationally, we're increasingly thrilled with their flavors, aromas and spices. Less gravy, more salsa. More corn chips. Brilliant idea by Taco Bell to add Doritos flavorings to their taco shells. Will Burger King someday stuff crunchy corn nachos into their Whoppers in America -- just as they're doing right now in Taiwan?

Four other factors are at play. There's the artisan bread movement with bakers kneading not just wheat but all manner of grains to produce a denser product that's eaten more slowly (I think of my husband's weekly two-day ritual to bake one large sour and aromatic whole-grain rye bread studded with barley; it lasts a week). There's the growing anti-gluten brigade of people who, with celiac disease or not, believe they should avoid wheat for health reasons.

There's also been a swing among fast-casual chains (like Chipotle) toward serving food in bowls instead of wraps, and a rise in salad sales at fast food chains, all taking a dent out of bread consumption.

And finally there's the residual from last decade's anti-carbohydrate movement when white foods and sweet stuff were forsaken by carnivores hoping to trim their midsections.

As for me, I'll still slather my homemade jam on a slice of my husband's warm homemade bread. It's a far better snack than a granola bar any time of the day.

Polenta: The Next Big Thing?

Not long ago, in the epicenter of Brooklyn's culinary scene, I had a delightful dinner in a place called Osteria il Paiolo. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, home to some of the world's hippest dining venues, is a multi-culti morass of righteous Jews, old-time Italians and Dominicans, and newly-converted food passionistas with young families and big dreams. It is also home to one of the only places I know that features polenta as its calling card, authentically made in an "il paiolo" -- a large unlined copper pot -- the traditional vessel in northern Italy in which to s-l-o-w-l-y stir ground cornmeal into boiling water and salt until thick and creamy. It is sturdier than porridge and more sublime than its humble ingredients might imply. I was no more than 19 years old when I first met its acquaintance during a trip to northern Italy. It was there that I had one of the my most memorable dishes of my life: A thick slice of Gorgonzola dolce onto which was poured a stream of hot buttery polenta across its girth. An exercise in simplicity, its creamy texture and unexpected melding of flavors and fragrances, was downright sinful. And while not the traditional form polenta usually takes, it remains a love-at-first bite memory. While the good people of Tuscany are known as "bean-eaters" because of their culinary proclivity towards legumes, the Piemontese locals are known as polentone. Apparently, everyone in Piedmont eats polenta all the time, and have done so before the Roman empire! (At that time, polenta was made from other grains such as millet, barley, and farro. Corn, or maize, appeared in the 16th century.)

That said, I was excited to try the polenta, and all the other good things I had heard about, at the dining spot loosely translated as "the polenta pot." It is an osteria which, in Italy, connotes a rather casual restaurant where the owner is also the host: Enter Alex Palumbo. Alex, a native of northern Italy's Piedmont region, was primed to bring the signature dish of his family's kitchen to slightly tonier environs. Amidst a sprawl of white table-clothed tables in an industrial modern space, one can dine very well indeed. In addition to the myriad ways to eat polenta, topped with tomatoes and quail, with shrimp and rosemary, with fontina, are exemplary antipasti and main courses -- we especially loved the homemade sausage with savory cabbage served in a terracotta casserole, and my husband said his roasted quail, prepared with pancetta, cream and sage, was the best he ever had. Good, too, was the unusual pappardelle al cioccolata, chocolate pasta with a wild boar and vegetable ragu.

Unbeknownst to me, authentic polenta is made with only water and salt, not the butter and cheese we have come to expect. But along the way, the latter ingredients have become commonplace. And while the ingredients may be 1-2-3, the mastery is in the preparation: Polenta must be slowly stirred for up to 45 minutes for its requisite creaminess and flavor. There are huge copper paiolo pots that have electric motors attached, but at Alex's osteria, everything is lovingly stirred by a mano (by hand.) Alex gets his heirloom polenta -- which is coarse and toothsome -- from a "secret source" in Italy and claims that no one else in New York (ergo the country) has it. At last count, the kitchen is stirring up more than 60 pound per month, up from 10 pounds when he first got started, not so long ago. Clearly, the locals are catching on.

In my own kitchen at home, I make polenta with tomatoes and Parmigiano-Reggiano as one of my ultimate comfort dishes, and on occasion, indulge in that time-honored memory of gorgonzola topped with steaming polenta. Only now I gild the dish with a tuft of balsamic-tinged wild arugula and anoint it all with my best extra-virgin olive oil on top. And I am still enamored of Colman Andrews' polenta with oranges and olive oil from his wonderful book, Flavors of the Riviera. The potential for polenta is promising, perhaps turning us all into polentone one day.

Osteria il Paiolo, 106 North 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (

Insanely Delicious Fresh Figs






What We'll be Eating in 2012

For decades I have tracked trends, and as a chef, author and consultant, have created many of them. Some have lingered longer than most marriages, yet others still hover around obscurity or are merely a reflection of personal wishes. Some were so ahead of their time as to be forgotten or "invented" by someone else. That said, as we embark upon a new year of eating, cooking, shopping, blogging, ipad-ing, app-ing, reading, listening, watching, and drinking, here is my list of predictions: Kibbutz-style entertaining:   Have a party, invite a bunch of friends, tell them to bring something. Who needs to show-off any more? Generosity begins the minute you open your door. You set the table, provide the booze and make a main course. Your friends can build the menu around it. You do the dishes. Fun, right? It's the best way I know to get together with your friends more often; take the pressure off cooking, and focus on the conversation around the table.










A woman chef for President: A decade ago I wrote a screenplay about a woman chef who runs for President. Could 2012 be the year some fabulous, personable, smart, focused, intelligent such person arrives on the scene? The plot of my screenplay presaged the tv show Commander in Chief starring Gena Davis and foretold the arrival of a woman chef at the White House. And it predicted the food movement and healthy eating as a political platform, i.e. that of Michelle Obama. Hollywood, are you listening?

Happy New Year. May it be filled with delicious things.