Sunday, November 7, 2010

Eat Your Words Class of 2010/2011 - Food Trends

(Above photo via Julie Van Rosendaal's Cherpumple "cake / pie" hybrid as seen on Babble's Food blog. Dessert's answer to the turducken!)

Trend-spotting is a major part of any culinary writer's skill set. We talk about tuning into these trends and keeping a running list as we spot them. Here are the trends we compiled in class yesterday.


  • pop-up restaurants
  • “foodcations” (an off-shoot of the "staycation" trend)
  • locavore
  • raised wild game (elk, bison, wild boar, reindeer, etc)
  • craft beer-and-food pairings
  • ginger beer
  • food security issues
  • sustainability
  • food ethics
  • cupcakes or NOT (this is a trend that just won't die even when it's dead)
  • macarons
  • gastro-pubs
  • covercharges at restaurants
  • enomatic systems
  • wine bars
  • tapas – again
  • raw milk
  • lentils
  • quinoa
  • infused spirits
  • bacon -- still, it's a mainstay trend
  • meat-stuffed inside other meats trend, and in fact, any food stuffed inside other foods (see yesterday's Wall Street Journal article featuring Calgary food writer Julie Van Rosendaal's Cherpumple dessert.)
  • pork belly
  • sugar backlash
  • 80s fashion (so we're wondering how that will manifest itself in the food world)
  • growth of casual fine dining (aka premium casual)

Here are some links to other trend lists:

What are the trends on your radar? We'll add them to the list.

Via Twitter, we had a comment that waffles should be added to the list. Via Comments, Peter Bailey, the beer columnist for The Tomato and great book blogger, adds IPA and Imperial to our list of "in" beers for 2010/11. Thanks Pete.

And here's another trend round-up out of the UK: Food Trends to Peak in 2011: Special-needs, Urbanism, On-demand from The Independent Food & Drink pages.

2 comments:

Cheryl Arkison said...

cover charges at restaurants?

Libarbarian said...

Beer Guy (me!) in The Tomato says Imperial or Double IPA is the "it" beer of 2010: http://bit.ly/dAK3Oq