#5 Peruvian: Peruvian is the new Mexican. Keep the rice, beans, corn, and chili peppers, but swap your margarita for a Pisco Sour and get serious about ceviche. Plus, they've got all kinds of potatoes! And fried plantains?? Nuff said.
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#6 Savory: While sports-team rivalries are continually carried on from parent to child and so on, polarizing political allegiances are entrenched for decades at a time, and social divides along religious fault lines are sustained for hundreds of years, there is perhaps no greater, time-worn point of contention than that between Sweet and Savory. If the latest trends hold true, though, Team Savory may have bested its Sweet adversary at long last.
Savory is crossing front lines into Sweet territory all over the place. Culinary cocktails with muddled herbs and veggies are being lifted in triumph across dimly lit gastro-lounges everywhere. Breakfast mainstays once thought to be securly under Sweet's control are now being overshadowed by sage-rosemary waffles and jalapeno muffins. Even dessert lists are featuring savory options, like lavender ice cream or bacon-chocolate anything. Of course, there's no telling when and where Sweet might strike a counter move...watch your back, pita pocket.
#7 Super Exotic Superfoods: The emerging lineup of superfood super stars are sure to make the previous generation of nutrient-dense talent look like a bunch of podunk, round-one runners-up from a Nowheresville beauty pagent. Pretty soon, blueberries will become the produce equivalent of "the one who wore full-coverage evening wear". And really, spinach? How far did you expect to get on just your smile and plate-spinning routine?
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Now, the superfood spotlight is shining on way more exotic beauties. Mangosteen-acai elixirs and 11-ancient-grains cereals are in, while OJ and whole-grain bread are out. The super-est superfruits -- like lychee fruit, guarana, or goji berries -- are the ones that hail from Amazonian jungles or faraway mountain peaks. (So much for girl-nextdoor sex appeal.) Explore the new superfood world with gusto, but remember, even superfood status doesn't justify your third Dragon fruit and Yumberry Mojito.
#8 Ethnic Breakfast: It may be the most important meal of the day, but breakfast has also been traditionally boxed in and boring. The good news is that as the global food scene evolves, fusion cuisine is finally finding its way to the breakfast table, too. Sayonara, sausage links. Look out for dishes such as coconut-milk pancakes, Asian-inspired syrups and chorizo scrambled eggs. Traditional ethnic breakfast items, such as huevos rancheros (Mexico), or shakshuka (Israel), are also benefiting from a surge in popularity.
#9 Cheese: Ah, America. If anything can challenge our love for freedom, democracy, and dramatic pyrotechnics, surely it is our national love of cheese. "Give us your wheels, your wedges, your sliced singles yearning to be melty..." Regardless of the fact that we already eat more cheese than we should, and more cheese than ever before -- more specifically, 33 pounds of cheese per year (check out the full New York Times article here) -- we cannot bring ourselves to turn away from dairy's dance of seduction.
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Beyond your basic burgers and pizza, fromage is getting a bit fancy-pants with the rise of artisanal cheese choices, in keeping with the hylo/ DIY theme this year. Now you can put a name and face to the farm, farmer, and even farmee, to the cheese on your [insert any food item here]. Menus are not only offering a wider selection of hand-crafted cheeses with increasingly nuanced tones of earthiness or briny bite, but may also share with you a blurb about the cow, sheep, or goat from whence it came.
Additionally, ethnic cheeses are livening things up a bit and lending a sense of "terroir" to your plate. Cheeses like manchego, halloumi, raclette, and queso fresco are tres trendy right now.
#10 Down-Home Desserts: At the risk of stating the painfully obvious, cupcakes are, without doubt or question, one of the best foods in the whole wide world ever ever ever. However, they're fatal flaw may be the fact that they lend themselves to the excessively cutesy. Just as cupcakeries have popped up on chic urban corners everywhere, so too have pukey pastel facades and a spectrum of pink polka-dotted awnings. The problem here is, when indulging in icing-plastered pastries, the only thing that should make you nauseous is a sudden surge in blood glucose levels -- not the ambient decor.
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Thus, more down-to-earth (and gender-neutral) desserts are vying for the position of “the new cupcake”. The most notable rising stars are pies and doughnuts. These desserts are more approachable and substantial, and they allow you to treat yourself without the spectacle. Of course, they're also being elevated above their humble truck-stop roots. For example, the Doughnut Vault in Chicago serves up chestnut, vanilla glazed, and crunchy pistachio varieties, while upscale pies may be found bite-sized, deconstructed, or filled with exotic (perhaps even super) fruits.
To those who feast fashionably -- cheers!
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