Yesterday, the 5pm Food blog predicted that the rise of plant-based eating would be one of the most significant food trends in 2018. Today, we’re taking a rather more frivolous look at the items likely to be on our menus over the coming year.
We are making no claims for original thought here. All of these have been swiped from a variety of sources including the annual Baum + Whiteman food trends forecast; Olive magazine; the BBC Good Food blog and Eat This.com.
According to this article in The Times, black will be the new, er, black. ‘South American sweetcorn, aged garlic and Shetland black potatoes’ will, apparently, be the only vegetables to be seen with in the more fashionable eating spots.
Although Olive mag takes a different stance and says that prickly pear cactus – especially in a salad – will be the most fashionable vegetable of 2018.
However, they also reckon that arrack – a fiery Sri Lankan spirit – will be the next big thing for the on-trend cocktail maker. Having suffered a blistering arrack-based hangover in Sri Lanka a few years ago, this blogger hopes that this prediction is a lot of old pony.
Eat This reckons that 2018 could be a great year for pint-sized gourmets. Apparently, wee Grant and Kylie will be tucking into lobster mac ‘n’ cheese or sushi the next time they go round their pals for a play date. We can’t see this on catching on anywhere outside of Islington, TBH.
Food trends in 2018: the year of Filipino food?
A couple of sources mention that 2018 will be the year of Filipino food. This is possibly good news for Edinburgh’s Cafe Presko which serves both Filipino dishes and burgers. Handy if your other half fancies a half pounder with cheese and you have your heart set on a nice plate of longsilog.
Over on the BBC Good Food blog, gut-friendly grub is their number one pick when it comes to dominant food trends in 2018.
Fermented, pickled and preserved food which feeds your gut flora is predicted to be big. One to look forward to for those of us with post-Christmas bellies that looks as though they have been filled with bowling balls.
Food trends in 2018: say cheers to boozy desserts
Finally, we turn to the ever informative, Brooklyn-based restaurant consultants Baum + Whiteman. They say watch out for facial recognition technology which will enable restaurant customers to pay with their face.
Apparently, there is a KFC in China with camera-embedded ordering kiosk. It can recognise repeat customers and remember what they ordered last time.
All of which sounds rather creepy. We much prefer their prediction that desserts are about to go boozy.
With the Hogmanay break just around the corner, the idea of getting sloshed on slushies seems an apt point to conclude our look at possible food trends in 2018.
The 5pm Dining blog wishes you all a very happy, healthy and well fed 2018.
We’ll be back on Wed 3rd January.