Rejoice, rejoice! Our cries for normalcy have been heard! (Even though we still plan on eating kale salads because our waistlines won’t keep themselves.)
The National Restaurant Association (NRA) is on its game for trend forecasting for 2015, predicting sort of everything we already knew: people want locally sourced foods, environmental sustainability, healthy meals for kids, blah blah blah. But wait! There’s a surprise!
When the NRA asked its 1,300 registered chefs to rank foods in order of “hot trends,” “yesterday’s news,” and “perennial trend,” we got a look at what chefs will (supposedly) be serving in the coming year. And the foods that have haunted us for the past two to three years may finally be fading into the distant memory. From the Nation’s Restaurant News website:
Besides underutilized fish, doughnuts, grass-fed beef and ethnic condiments, other trends that gained in popularity among chefs included grilled vegetables, brown/wild rice, free-range pork/poultry, specialty iced tea, alternative red meats, fresh beans/peas, root vegetables and gelato.
Trends declining in popularity, in addition to nose-to-tail, kale salads and bruschetta, were hybrid desserts, housemade soft drinks, gluten-free cuisine, ethnic-inspired kids dishes, Korean food, Greek yogurt and milkshakes.
Topics marked most frequently as “yesterday’s news” were insects, foam/froth/air, gazpacho, bacon-flavored/covered chocolate and popovers.
Now, we can totally pound doughnuts all day long to the good news. No more Cronut knockoffs! No more gluten-free nonsense! (Do you think people finally got the hint?) No more Greek yogurt to make us feel guilty! No more bacon and chocolate desserts! (Wait, should we be happy about that?)
Rejoice, diners: 2015 may mark a year of sanity in food just yet.
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