][1]As is traditional at this time of year, the 5pm Dining blog will attempt to predict the food fashions and trends which will be dished up over the next twelve months. We can confidently predict that we’ll do that on Monday. First, as is also traditional, we draw readers’ attention to what might be called our mixed fortunes at foodie fortune telling in previous years.
For example, last year, we reckoned that beef consumption would fall due to rising prices. In the long term, this is inevitable. In the context of the Central Belt over the last twelve months, it was woefully inaccurate. In fact, new burger and BBQ restaurants/bars were the dominant story in the Central Belt and especially in Glasgow.
Pulled pork; a massive variety of ever more finessed beef burgers and even meaty cocktails were the smoking hot food trends of 2013.
Street food comes home
We almost got things half right when we predicted that 2013 would be the year in which street food and food trucks became a more common sight around Scotland’s Central Belt. Things didn’t quite pan out the way in which we forecast.
We did see Loving Food launch their food truck business in Stirling. However, a wider trend was that of street food caterers moving operations indoors with both Babu Bombay Street Kitchen and Harajuku Kitchen launching their own restaurants. Similarly, the Street Food Cartel really came into their own last year with a series of events in which their members (Smoak, Fire in Bablyon, Pad BKK and so on) joined forces for two or three day, indoor pop-ups.
Authenticity police
One thing we did get right was that authenticity was going to be more closely policed. What we actually said was that there will be more lawsuits as consumers question restaurateurs and food producers about their labelling. What exactly does a menu mean when it says ‘homemade’? Whose home? Are those scallops really hand-dived? What does ‘natural’ mean?
As it turns out, these were just minor symptoms of a much larger problem. Corrupt supply chains a.k.a the horse meat scandal was the story which set the agenda for a large part of last year. As you may recall, many of Britain’s largest food retailers had their fingers burned when it came to light that their 100% beef burgers contained horse meat.
It is a story which looks set to run and run. Over the last few days, it has been reported that a large supermarket in China is selling donkey meat, popular in certain regions of China, which is contaminated with fox meat. Expect more of the same.
On Monday, we will gaze into our crystal ball and create another batch of hostages to fortune which we can guffaw at in January 2015.