From virtual restaurants to faux meats, take a look at the latest trends in food from Baum + Whiteman, an international food and restaurant consulting firm.
The 11 Hottest Food Trends for 2017
Home cooks are showing off their kitchen skills in two different ways. Yuma in Montreal is an app that allows home cooks to prepare food and deliver to local residents. And Feastly—operating in five U.S. locations—is a start-up supper club, allowing people to reserve a seat at a dining event in a cook’s home.
*Trends from Baum + Whiteman, an international food and restaurant consulting firm.
Feastly
Start-ups and food chains are opening commercial kitchens in cheap locations to deliver chef-prepared food to homes. For instance, Momofuko chef David Chang has two delivery-only brands in New York—Maple and Ando—while Munchery delivers ready-to-heat meals from commercial kitchens in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York.
Ando Food
Then there are drones. Google drones are delivering Chipotle burritos on the Virginia Tech campus. Domino’s has a delivery drone in New Zealand and 7-Eleven has drones bringing Slurpees and sandwiches to residents in Reno, Nevada. Who’s next?
© Neil Hall / Reuters
A quarter of Americans are trying to eat less meat and as a result, veggie “meats” have taken center stage. Three major San Francisco chefs have put the Impossible Burger—a bleeding veggie burger—on their menus. And vegetable “butcher shops” have opened in Minneapolis and Toronto, which sell meatless burgers, sausages, meatballs and ribs.
Momofuku
Veggie-centric restaurants are becoming more popular such as Ladybird in New York that offers a vegetable charcuterie plate with smoked carrot, cured beet, mushroom pate and beet chorizo. There’s also Nix in New York with both vegetarian and vegan menus. Veggies are even displacing conventional comfort foods like lasagna and macaroni and cheese. Comfort food searches including the word “veggies” on Pinterest jumped 336 percent in the last year.
To counter the veggie trend, some artisan butchers are adding an eat-in option to their shops. In Baltimore, there’s Parts & Labor where you can pick up a cut of meat and enjoy a full board of house cured meats (with a beer) among other options. In New Orleans, there’s a dining counter at the butcher shop Shank Charcuterie that serves up steak and eggs or house sausages.
Parts & Labor
The Southern American classic meat fare is moving in on bacon’s turf. In Washington, D.C., Astro Doughnuts is serving honey-butter fried chicken in a donut. Atlanta’s Empire State South offers a chicken biscuit with pimento cheese, bacon marmalade and scrambled eggs. In Charleston, S.C., Hominy Grill serves up its Big Nasty Biscuit with fried chicken, cheddar and sausage gravy. And in L.A., check out Free Range’s tempura chicken, honey sriracha and scrambled eggs.
This year, kale lost its footing to seaweed, thanks to its umami and presence in ramen, which is rising in popularity across the country. But now chefs are turning to other “waste-not” greens, such as leftover beet, turnip and mustard greens, chard and carrot tops, which customarily were thrown out. Some chefs may even pickle these trimmings and use them as condiments.
Flickr / City Foodsters
On the unhealthiest end of the spectrum comes the freakshakes—a milkshake with generous amounts of ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce, plus toppings of cake, cookies, donuts and candies. Get one at Black Tap in New York; at The Original Dinerant in Portland, Oregon; at Burger Republic in Nashville; at The Boston Burger Co. in Boston; and at Lunchbox Laboratory in Seattle.
Black Tap New York
Another ice cream creation—the rollup—comes the way of Thailand. This treat is made from frozen thin layers of liquid ice cream that are rolled into cylinders and garnished in a cup. You can find them at 10Below Ice Cream in New York, Chelo Creamery in Los Angeles, Ice Land in Philadelphia, 8 Fahrenheit Ice Cream in Atlanta and Holla Mode in Austin, Texas.
10Below Ice Cream
Restaurants are coming from unlikely sources, such as food suppliers. Kellogg’s opened a cereal restaurant in Times Square, while Chobani Yogurt has a café in SoHo. Even retailers are getting into the act. Guess Corp. is introducing The Guess Bread Company that offers sandwiches, soups, salads, bread, desserts and wine. And Macy’s is adding Martha Stewart Cafes in the department store.
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