food

2017's Hot Menu Trends: Beef Is Back; Exotic Flavors Keep Coming

Looks like meat lovers who’ve felt shamed by health fanatics in recent years can look forward to ordering at restaurants with impunity in 2017.

The year’s hottest restaurant trend, based on the National Restaurant Association’s annual survey of chefs, is “new cuts of meat, including shoulder tender, oyster steak and Vegas strip steak.

Further, hot trend #4 is “house-made charcuterie” — dubbed the “cured-meat answer to the cheese plate.”

Other trends ranked in the top 10:

  • Street food-inspired dishes: These are foods that “erve as a gateway to other cultures, people and places, such as dumplings, tempura or kabobs.
  • Healthful kids’ meals: Kids still love their burgers and fries, but salads, fruit, whole grains and leans proteins are showing up on menus with growing frequency, says NRA. 
  • Sustainable seafood: Consumers are increasingly concerned about how seafood is sourced and how it affects the eco-system, and chefs are listening.
  • Ethnic-inspired breakfast items: With breakfast foods becoming 24/7 items, dishes featuring Asian-flavored foods like chorizo scrambled eggs, as well as breakfast burritos, continue to grow in popularity.
  • House-made condiments: Chef-prepared sriracha and made-from-scratch ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise are being spotlighted. 
  • Authentic ethnic cuisines:  Ethnic foods and global cuisine are more popular than ever, thanks to adventurous Millennials and Americans’ yen for international travel.
  • Heirloom produce:  The focus on sourcing has also driven chefs to seek out “venerable varietals” of fruits and vegetables.
  • African flavors:  Relatively under-explored in the U.S thus far, African whole grains, vegetables and spices are starting to appear on menus across the country, reports NRA.

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For the survey, the NRA surveyed nearly 1,300 members of the American Culinary Federation, to rank a list of 169 items as a “hot trend,” “yesterday’s news” or a “perennial favorite” on restaurant menus in 2017.

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