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.