• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, November 14, 2011

How are restaurant chefs planning to surprise and delight diners next year? Many of the leading trends are unusual twists on old favorites, or updated comfort foods, according to hospitality and restaurant consulting firm Andrew Freeman & Co.

Have-it-your-way potatoes will be big -- including French-fry menus that let diners choose the cut, crispness and sauce; make-your-own mashed potatoes with mix-ins; and custom-cut chips with dips and dusts to order.

High-end, as well as fast-casual restaurants, are devoting special evenings or entire menus to signature grilled cheese sandwiches.

Reinterpreting breakfast foods for dinner -- offering waffle or hollandaise-topped sandwiches, turnovers, pigs in blankets, eggs cooked in many ways, and sweet or savory French toast or bread puddings -- is a hot theme.

Desserts? “Snow ice” -- a treat that offers the flavor and creaminess of ice cream but an extremely light texture -- will take off in the U.S. next year. Some restaurants are using ice cream as a “blank canvas” to entice people to try new flavors (grass and horseradish ice cream), or turning vegetables into desserts (goat cheese with celery, fig agrodolce and celery sorbet). Dutch desserts featuring the dark treacle syrup stroop also will be increasingly popular.

Other trend highlights:

• Health-conscious diners will be offered signature whole-grain salads and sides, a selection of plates available in smaller sizes, and items designed for specific dietary needs, such as gluten-free.
• Eastern European -- and Hungarian, in particular -- and modern takes on Thai dining will move into the mainstream. Indian street foods (kati rolls, puri with sauces/condiments, and pav sandwiches with spiced vegetables will be offered in food trucks, pop-ups and QSRs.
• Using infusions of pine needles, Douglas fir and eucalyptus to flavor sauces, rubs, meats, jus and broths.
• Using specialty chile peppers in all kinds of foods. Examples: Middle-Eastern Aleppo peppers, African piri piris, and Indian ghost peppers.
• Tableaux settings or edible landscapes that represent the food’s origins (oysters served on a rock, mushrooms in a forest of edible “moss,” etc.).
• Beverages: cask-aged cocktails, vintage beers and mixed drinks on tap; fruit-infused beers; double-shot drinks and shots-and-beers; cocktails in solid form (sorbet, popsicles, layered jellies); mini cocktails; cocktail trucks; bitter-lemon soda as a mixer; one-shot sampling of premium spirits and wines.
• Ingredients: hand-pulled noodles; yuzu kosho (Japanese spice); schnitzel; Isaan sausage; homemade marshmallows in exotic flavors; marrow/rib/ham bones and bone soup; duck and goose eggs; currywurst; lamb belly; crispy pig, chicken and fish skin; Parisian gnocchi; rye whiskey, zwack (Hungarian herbal whiskey) and honey liquor; date syrup/glazes (on meats and in drinks).
• Some fine-dining establishments/chefs are spinning off fast-casual restaurants (premium ingredients in dressed-down settings), while some fast-casuals are dressing up the experience with more formal plateware and service. “Strip service” -- keeping prices low by stripping back dining rooms (bare tables, bare amenities, letting guests pour their own water and even set their own tables) -- is another format trend.