Farewell, meatloaf. You were so satisfying while the comfort-food era
lasted.
So long, mac and cheese. Thanks for the calories.
Time to ring in 2008. Time to step out of the cheap-chic comfort zone and get into some extreme eating.
As in braised veal-cheek burgers topped with crispy Berkshire pork belly. Or, for a lighter alternative, grass-fed bison "sliders," those cute, tapas-style mini-patties, topped with onion confit and the chef's own pickled heirloom beets.
Or, for a meatless option, how about a tempeh fajita with sriracha - the Thai hot sauce - and cooled with a dollop of this year's lacto-vegetarian "it" ingredient, goat yogurt.
Dessert should be worth the wait. It's domestic caviar with corn crème fraîche ice cream and a sliver of fair-trade Venezuelan chocolate.
To wash it all down, you'll probably want to minimize your carbon mouthprint with a carafe of local tap water, filtered and carbonated by the restaurant and added to your bill like an $8 bottle of the imported stuff. (Hey, you didn't expect free tap water in 2008, did you?)
Far-out burgers, odd animal parts, undersized portions, quirky desserts, sustainable seafood, greenhouse-friendly packaging and vegetarian fusion dishes - they're all hotter than the $500 Viking portable induction cooker that will soon be standard equipment in high-end home kitchens.
"Consumers are becoming far more creative and far more adventuresome in what they're looking for in a dining experience," said Michael Whiteman, president of Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co., a New York-based firm that consults to restaurants around the world and just compiled a list of restaurant trends for 2008. "They're looking for new kinds of presentations of old dishes, they're looking for new ingredients."
In some cases, those ingredients have been sitting under our noses all along. Mr. Whiteman says consumers everywhere are discovering that steaks and chops come from animals that have heads, hoofs and tails.
Broadening a fine-dining trend that started years ago with extreme-cuisine chefs such as Martin Picard of Montreal and Fergus Henderson of London, such items as beef and lamb cheeks are cropping up on middlebrow menus, Mr. Whiteman notes. More nasty bits are undoubtedly on the way. "Is tongue the next lamb shank?" he asks rhetorically.
Here are a few more gastro fashions that will be on parade at a restaurant table or supermarket near you.
The British invasion
Once the reliable butt of satirical humour, English food, the world is learning, goes far beyond bubble, squeak, Jamie and Nigella. Interest in Anglo gastronomy is being whipped up by lower-profile British-based writers such as Kate Colquhoun, author of Taste: The Story of Britain Through its Cooking, and Simon Hopkinson, whose classic Roast Chicken and Other Stories (published in the mid-1990s) has reportedly been outselling Harry Potter titles and was recently voted the "most useful cookery book of all time" by a panel of English food writers. Mr. Hopkinson has just followed Roast Chicken with a new book, Week In, Week Out.
Also behind the British invasion are Mr. Ferguson of St. John restaurant, whose latest book is called Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking, Part II, molecular chef Heston Blumenthal, about to launch a tasting menu of long-lost British dishes at his famed The Fat Duck restaurant outside London, and Nigel Slater, celebrated newspaper columnist whose recent book Eating For England is an homage to his country's favourites, from Yorkshire pudding to Jaffa cakes.
Ethnic goes specific
If it's possible to dub British cuisine "ethnic," then England joins a host of other, ever-more-specific regional cuisines earning space on the mainstream North American dining table.
Consumers are "seeking out new kinds of ethnic cuisines from specific areas," Mr. Whiteman said. "Asian is no longer a trend. People have graduated beyond the catch-all of Latin-American food." In other words, bye-bye Indian; hello Bengali, Goan and Punjabi. Mexican is now either Yucatan, Pueblan, Oaxacan or Veracruzan.
The microregional trend is not confined to restaurant dining. "We're also seeing traditional shoppers going to ethnic supermarkets," Mr. Whiteman said. "They're no longer afraid to do this. The better ethnic supermarkets have become shopping destinations." In Canada, the list includes T&T Supermarket, a sensational Asian-oriented chain with stores in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.
Bite-size me
Adventurous consumers may not be buying as much wasabi mayo for their tuna tartare, however. In a poll of 1,282 chefs by the U.S. National Restaurant Association in October, 41 per cent declared raw meats such as tartare and carpaccio passé.
Other items chefs deemed more passé than au courant include wasabi, chai (specifically Indian spiced-milk tea), comfort foods such as polenta and deep-fried meats and fish, and French cuisine.
Their top hot items: bite-size desserts, local and organic produce, small tapas-style plates and specialty sandwiches.
According to other food-industry experts, the contest for hot ingredient of 2008 includes at least three front runners - North American caviar, burrata (a decadently creamy style of mozzarella cheese) and black licorice. In that trilogy are also three big, if often conflicting, themes: environmental virtue, health and hedonism.
North American caviar, unlike fish roe from endangered Caspian sturgeon, comes from sustainable sources, such as Arctic whitefish and Canadian sturgeon. It also delivers caviar's briny flavour and lusciously buttery texture at a big discount. Also, producer-retailers such as Caviar Direct in Toronto tend to package their fish eggs with less added salt, yielding a purer flavour.
If you've not yet noticed burrata in your excursions to the gourmet cheesemonger, it may be because the softball-shaped rounds, which make arresting centrepieces for cheese plates, were sold out. "It's gaining popularity like crazy," said Dana McCauley, a Toronto-based food-trend expert and author of the new cookbook Dana's Top Ten Table. "Stores can't keep it in stock."
Ms. McCauley says black licorice has been benefiting from a reputation for soothing stomachs and easing skin conditions as well as its subtly bitter and versatile flavour. Avant-garde chef Grant Achatz of Chicago's top-ranked Alinea restaurant has been adding it to cakes and squab, and even melting it into a sauce for braised short ribs. As New York-based cookbook author Dorie Greenspan observed in the Chicago Tribune recently, "I think we're in a licorice moment."
Not your mama's boil-in-bag
Slow poaching in airtight plastic bags, a French technique known as sous vide, has been perhaps the biggest cooking technique embraced by high-end restaurants in recent years, thanks to its fat-free heat and ability to preserve moisture and texture. This may be the year it encroaches on home cooking - if only in an ersatz way.
Plastic-bag steaming, previously associated with boil-in-bag processed foods, is shedding its 1960s stigma. At least two major plastic-bag manufacturers emerged recently with microwave-safe steaming sacks designed for fresh food. The pitch: no messy pots and no oil, butter or added water.
Ms. McCauley has tried the products and says they work, but she wonders how they'll play to an audience increasingly sensitive about plastics and radiation.
Virtue, with a side of sin
Contradictions abound in this year's food trends - consider the bottled-water backlash that could reach a fever pitch in 2008.
Just as some restaurants, notably Chez Panisse in California, are installing water-purification and carbonation systems (ostensibly to spare the planet by avoiding the environmental costs associated with transporting and packaging bottles), some establishments are embracing aqua-debauchery.
No water in Los Angeles has ever been hotter, figuratively speaking, than Bling H20, a $50-a-bottle brand in frosted glass accessorized with Swarovski crystals. And that's a bargain next to Tasmanian Rain, a $70 brand collected from the skies of Australia's big southern island.
In the same contradictory vein, chefs everywhere today may trumpet local ingredients, including oh-so-trendy Niagara Peninsula prosciutto from expert producer Mario Pingue, yet there's never been more cachet surrounding exotic, imported products such as Iberico ham from Spain.
Another contradiction that shows no sign of abating is sin versus virtue. Witness the evolving craze for burgers made with decadent, fatty and even controversial meats, such as veal cheeks, suckling pig and highly marbled Kobe beef.
Even fast-food purveyors are taking excess to new extremes with such offerings as the Baconator burger from Wendy's, two quarter-pound patties topped with - wait for it - six strips of hickory-smoked bacon. And there's McDonald's Angus Burger, a one-third-pounder successor to the Quarter Pounder, being test-marketed in select U.S. regions.
So much for those New Year's resolutions to attend more yoga classes. Maybe Baconator lovers can atone later with a plate of microwave-steamed carrots.