Sometimes it takes a culinary tour to set the record straight. For Gordon Food Service corporate consulting chef Gerry Ludwig and his team, it took exactly 108 restaurants and 1,151 dishes and an eight-week tasting tour of New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles to understand what emerging flavors, ingredients and menu items are trending right now.
Ludwig relayed his findings during Monday’s session of the MenuDirections 2015 conference in Memphis, Tenn., an event presented by FoodService Director magazine.
Approximately 120 noncommercial operators attended Ludwig’s 90-minute rapid-fire “Hot off the Menu” presentation that highlighted food trends at independent eateries ranging from food halls and takeout windows to fast casuals and fine-dining operations.
Although the top trends come from the restaurant side of the business, Ludwig was quick to point out implications for the noncommercial sector.
Among the takeaways and tips he shared from his dining tour:
1. Healthy coast-to-coast. Healthy options are nothing new on menus, but Ludwig sees healthy food taking off in new directions.
For example, ReViVer in New York City scores each menu item on four principles: balance, nutrition, purity and how “clean” it was. But flavor comes first, as evidenced by menu items such as Basque Shrimp with smoky paprika sauce over greens—an upscale dish that sells for about $12 in the fast casual.
The Harvest Bar, a.k.a. “the super food café” in Sherman Oaks, Calif., uses readymade frozen acai puree and dragon fruit puree as the base for breakfast bowls, adding fruit, nuts and other toppings.
Tip: Steal the idea of using acai and dragon fruit puree as a base for a college and university breakfast bar.
2.The explosion of egg dishes. “The runny egg trend is not over,” Ludwig says. Sandwiches are just the start—sunnyside-up eggs are appearing on salads, bowls, and more, at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Eggslut in L.A.’s Grand Central Market has lines out the door waiting for the restaurant’s unique bacon-egg-cheese sandwich, a.k.a.“the BEC.” The signature sandwich is made with heritage-pork bacon, runny eggs and farmstead cheddar and topped with flavorful condiments such as chipotle ketchup or honey mustard aioli. There are other egg-centric concepts across the country, including Egg Shop in New York and Eastman Egg Company in Chicago, Ludwig observed.
Tip: Runny eggs add value and flavor across the menu, serving as a primary or secondary sauce when used as a topper. One caveat: undercooked eggs should be avoided in senior living and some health care facilities.
3. Take comfort in using broth. Bone broth is everywhere, from the Brodo takeout window of New York City’s Hearth restaurant, to Asian Box, a multiunit concept in California doing chicken and beef broth that customers can upgrade to a noodle bowl.
Operators are adding dumplings, shiitake mushrooms, roasted garlic puree, bone marrow and other extras to amp up flavor and substance. Bone broth is a very concentrated source of protein known for its restorative properties and Ludwig predicts it will soon be as popular as fresh-pressed juices.
Tip: Target the customer seeking healthy, intensely flavored foods; Ludwig sees opportunities with millennials and assisted living residents.
4. Put a toaster on the table. Chicago’s Baker Miller mills its own flour and bakes its own bread. At the restaurant, every table has a toaster so guests can custom-toast their bread, then head to a communal table laden with a variety of jams and spreads to finish it off.
Tip: Adding a toaster to each table is a cool idea that could be a hit at campus dining locations.
5. Mucho matcha. Ludwig noticed operators making their own kombucha, the lightly fermented drink, serving it on tap and adding flavorings and spices to ramp it up.
The beverage has legs, but he concluded that matcha—the finely powdered green tea—will be mainstream within 24 months. New York City is a hotbed for matcha—the team sipped matcha lattes, matcha hot chocolate and Fuji apple ginger iced matcha, among other specialty matcha beverages.
Tip: Matcha provides the stimulating effects of caffeine with the bonus of antioxidants. There’s a tremendous opportunity for noncommercial operators to create signature “healthy halo” drinks with matcha, Ludwig said.
6. Spoon-tender sandwich meats. Restaurants are going beyond beef, braising pork, chicken, lamb and goat in rich broths or seasoned liquids and then layering the meats with other flavorful ingredients in sandwiches. One of Ludwig’s favorite examples is Untamed Sandwiches in New York City, where condiments such as walnut pesto and pickled Thai chilies add layers of flavor.
Tip: All meats are fair game, including secondary parts, such as chicken drumsticks and lamb necks that yield tremendous value for low cost when braised and topped with zesty condiments.
7. Good-bye vegetarian, hello veg-centric. Chefs are devoting large or separate sections of the menu to vegetables, Ludwig said, treating them to “aggressive cooking methods.” These include roasting whole cauliflower or eggplant on the rotisserie, a technique used at New York City’s Narcissa, or grilling meaty oyster mushrooms with tarragon butter, a specialty of Gjelina restaurant in Venice, Calif. These vegetable dishes may have “garnishes” of housemade ricotta cheese, white cured anchovies or crispy chicken skin; they are not vegetarian but clearly have been elevated to the center of the plate.
Tip: Vegetable sharing platters can expose customers to different treatments and turn them on to plant-based dishes.
8. Root-to-stem cooking. Following in the steps of the nose-to-tail movement, some chefs are treating vegetables like others treat animals. They are using every part of the vegetable, including potato peels, corncobs, chard stems and radish tops, to get as close to 100 percent yield as possible. Chef Joe Isidori of Chalk Point Kitchen in New York City uses stems from parsley and other herbs in salads, for example.
Tip: Instead of throwing vegetable scraps into the garbage or compost heap, throw them back on the plate to truly reduce waste.