The 'Aughts are over! So let's move firmly and confidently into the
real meat of the 21st Century. Here's a bakers dozen of trends for the
New Year.
Mobile
Foods. Street food with a parking space. If you can put wheels on it,
you're off and running. Immigrant or Celeb-bratty Chef, it's a great way
to try things out, go right to your customers and expand your horizons.
Have stove will travel.
Gardens
and more gardens. Just because things seem to be getting better it
doesn't dampen last year's explosion of personal plots. In large part
thanks to the back yard produce program of Michelle Obama, we're all
gonna continue to dig it! And get delicious foods for our messy efforts.
Seasonal,
regional and fresh! Families and restaurant chains, high end eateries
and local diners, we're all going to see a lot more of what's ripe and
ready from just down the road. We'll figure out what and how and if
we'll mention it or just expect it but what we chow down will be from a
lot closer by.
Pizza,
pizza everywhere and not a drop to waste. Fresh, handmade and local
mozzarella on top, we'll keep digging into what Mediterraneans have
known about for millennia. Few but perfectly handled ingredients just
prove that machines can never replace what nice folks and hot ovens can
cook.
The
Great American Hamburger lives on. There's a reason that a good burger
feels like an America
birthright - and it's not far flung beef parts from unknown quarters.
Hand ground from beef cattle raised on personal pastures. Gussie it up
or leave it be, it's a simple pleasure that's worth the extra trouble to
do right.
Speaking
of chopped and cooked, sausages are great food if the right cook puts
together good ingredients. It fits a lot of bills - that need to stay
lower these days.
Which
marries well with our need for Comforting Foods - Part Due.
Italian food has become the new normal.
Managing to be special without being strange, people seem happy to 'go
Italian' for almost any meal at almost any level. Thirty years ago it
was classified as "ethnic food". Now it's just lunch.
One
easy/tasty standout that seems on the verge of going national is some
and all versions of what the Vietnamese call Banh Mi - and we call them
good, zippy sandwiches.
I
know I have a conflict of devotion with this one but boy, am I glad to
see really good mac and cheese just about everywhere. I had it as a
middle course - covered with shaved black truffle - on Christmas Eve,
and then again served from Corning ware
on a Brooklyn
counter top to bring in the New Year. It's just good eat'n', and a cure
for whatever ails us. And no, I don't mean Kraft Dinner. I mean aged
cheddar and good noodles and...whatever else seems like a good idea,
especially if some form of bacon is involved.
Freshly
butchered meats. Now that it's become a foodie fetish, and we've had a
few e-coli scares, we realize yet again, the value of knowledge and
craft, hard work and the wisdom of learning and preserving cultural
foodways. And the taste!