The Year Ahead: Hottest Food & Restaurant Trends 2022

Every year, for the past twenty years, my intrepid husband, the international food and restaurant consultant Michael Whiteman, publishes a wonderful, sometimes irreverent, but always prescient trends report about the world of food, dining, and technology. His forecast, affectionately known as “The Whiteman Report” gets picked up quickly all over the world, and was recently highlighted in Forbes (Nov. 25, 2021). From a list of 12 sizzling predictions and 17 mouthwatering buzzwords that comprise his forecast, Forbes journalist, Eustacia Huen, chose four that she deemed to be the most salient. This, too, becomes an interesting prism from which to view the coming year. For me, I loved the case made in support of what we once so passionately cared about: “No! Fine Dining Is Not Dead.” Add to that, Korean hot dogs, mac-and-cheese ice cream, tater tots casserole, and the robotization of commercial kitchens, means the hi-low debate will no doubt continue well into 2022.

Baum+Whiteman, the renowned restaurant consulting group, develops high-profile restaurants, hotels, and luxury dining destinations around the world, including six of New York’s three-star restaurants (Windows on the World, Rainbow Room, Hudson River Club, Aurora, Market Bar & Dining Room, and Cellar in the Sky). Their annual hospitality predictions follow ...

Vegan chicken everywhere ... Ghost kitchens’ runaway population explosion ... Quirky fast-food trends from Asia ... Heritage cooking in the spotlight ... What’s a boozetarian? …Plus 17 buzzwords for the year ahead. Read all about it!

Wishing you a healthy, happy, and delicious New Year.

Mid-Year Food Trends 2021

Happy Summer!  It is mid-way to the year-end food trends report joyfully undertaken by our company, Baum + Whiteman -- a restaurant consulting group dedicated to the creation of immersive food and restaurant projects all over the world. We are excited about the most recent good news! Restaurant sales last month beat all records, besting their previous high recorded in January 2020, just before the Covid pandemic exploded.

With summer travel expected to soar, restaurant sales will continue their upward trend – particularly as vaccinated Americans feel safe about returning to indoor dining.  This surge in restaurant spending seems to accompany a down-trend in retail sales.  That’s probably because consumers have used all the money that the government’s been sending out to purchase almost everything they’ve wanted.  So they’re now redirecting those dollars toward pleasurable pursuits.

However, it’s not all roses.  Next time you visit your favorite restaurant, you’re likely to encounter some startling price rises, and there are three reasons for this.  First, restaurateurs need to replenish their cash reserves after losing about $280 billion since the pandemic’s onset.  Second, shortages of practically everything – from paper cups to chicken wings – are triggering higher prices for restaurant supplies.  And, most important of all, there’s an extreme shortage of labor.  This also suggests that along with higher menu prices, you’re likely in many places to endure disjointed service. (The flip side to that is those who are working seem especially kind and grateful.)

Low wages, tough working conditions and this year’s focus on “worker equity” all have prompted about one-third of restaurant employees to move to different industries – or to move from big cities to places where living is easier and cheaper.  And this labor shortage is occurring as thousands of restaurants are reopening, adding to demands for labor while putting upward pressure on simple hamburgers, lofty rib steaks, or decadent desserts. Value meals, in fact, are disappearing at fast food locations. 

No matter.  The big news is that it’s great to have our restaurants back!

Here are five trendlets for the summer:

-- Boozed-up seltzer, with or without added flavorings.  Most contain about 5% alcohol but they vary up to about 12%, which is the same jolt you’d get from a glass of wine.  They’re for people who are drinking “lighter.”  Keto-maniacs like them.  And they offer cheap thrills.

-- Tajin.  The perfect summer spice mix from Mexico.  You can make your own simple version.  Or buy jars that contain ground mild chilies, dehydrated lime and sea salt. Dip the rim of your Bloody Mary glass in the mix, or sprinkle the stuff on scrambled eggs, roast chicken or, as they do on New York City streets, dip slices of mango in it.  

-- Calabrian chilis packed in oil.  During Covid, house-bound consumers began cooking again, and searching for “interesting” ingredients.  This one, driven by social media, is pretty hot but with lots of flavor.  They’ve gone from esoteric to mass-market in no time – from gourmet shop shelves to Trader Joe’s and Target.

--Upmarket “new Chinese American” takeout. We’re thrilled about the recent New York Times article (6/21/21), “More than Just Take Out” by Cathy Erway, featuring our friends at the growing fast-casual chain NICE DAY by Junzi.

--Devoted watching of “High on the Hog” – a Netflix docu-series illuminating how African- American cooking transformed America (based on the book by Dr. Jessica Harris).

--The global tofu market is soaring and will continue until 2027.  

Buzzwords and favorite bites:

Sake on tap (and sake bars); pistachio-filled croissants at Carissa (in East Hampton); salmorejo (a silky gazpacho-like puree, the color of lipstick – my version is made only with bread, olive oil, ripe tomatoes, garlic and a splash of sherry vinegar); vegetarian Reuben sandwiches made with roasted beets, truffle-infused hot sauce (by Truff); sunflower butter; tonburi, and Friendly’s Forbidden Chocolate ice cream (not kidding).

Restaurants Without Seats? Big Trends In 2017

Food trends are fascinating; we are obsessed with what we eat. But more importantly, these trends tell larger stories about who we are. Looked at yearly, they depict the shifting sands of consumer behavior.

For example, I’ve just learned that ordering food delivered from restaurants surges, improbably, on ... Valentine’s Day! It’s not because of the death of romanticism in America or because restaurants are heavily booked. Just the opposite: Lured by the ease of Internet ordering and speedy delivery by Uber or Amazon, people increasingly are “eating out” at home and abandoning restaurant dining rooms.

So a big trend for 2017 will be companies opening experimental kitchen-only restaurants whose sole purpose is to send prepared meals to your home. They are called “phantom restaurants” (also known as ghost restaurants) because no one ever visits them. They’re located in low-rent locations but staffed by real chefs and cooks. Even Olive Garden, just last week, said that it was considering building kitchens in warehouse districts that could deliver to a major city, an idea earlier floated by the fast-growing Panera Bread company.

I’ve attached an article on this very subject by Financial Times’s restaurant critic Nicholas Lander as reprinted in last week’s blog by Jancis Robinson, one of the world’s premier wine experts (and someone I’ve adored for decades). Expansion of delivery-only kitchens is reshaping the restaurant business — and perhaps also our waistlines. Or it may simply satisfy an innate desire to nest.

Every year I write about food trends as gleaned from the best in the business, and there are many exciting ones on the horizon. Is seaweed the next kale? Are wildly creative sandwiches reshaping how we think about breakfast? Will congee be the next new thing? (I am crazy about it; any time of the day.) There’s all this and lots more in the 2017 food and beverage forecast from Baum+Whiteman International Restaurant Consultants, which you can read about here. Most intriguing in this report is an analysis of why vegetables are becoming the new “comfort food,” and whether that means we’re saying goodbye to mac-and-cheese.

What are some other trends on the horizon? Well, gentrification of the $4 “chopped cheese” for one. A sandwich, made famous in the bodegas of Harlem and the South Bronx, went viral this year, causing a stampede to the upper reaches of the city. This mélange of ground beef, American cheese and condiments, all piled on a hero bucks the trend of highly contrived, super-creative, attention-getting food served elsewhere at more like $4 a bite.

Another trend? Chef magicians turning food-waste into delectable things to eat. I am one of them and among the first to fry carrot tops to use as a garnish, and definitely the first to boil the peelings of fresh asparagus to resemble fettuccine. I also make “compost soup,” and transform leftover bits of iceberg lettuce into a wondrous vegetable by simply sautéing with olive oil and lemony sumac. I pulverize old gnarly carrots into “nibs” and toss them with couscous. So good. And essential to creating a sustainable planet.

Other trends? Chefs who use menu language in new ways and intentionally break from traditional forms. I now teach a class at the New School for Social Research (in New York City) called “The Language of Food,” which looks at menus as a form of literature. And chefs, like poets, use the fewest possible words to express desire and hunger, getting to the essence of a dish quickly, like good haiku. More? Specialty drinks with LED lights inside the ice cubes has a certain poetry of its own, as does “candy floss” (the British word for cotton candy) used in brand new ways.

More? It’s time to click on Whiteman’s forecast for 2017 – sporting the 13 hottest food & beverage trends in restaurant & hotel dining, not to mention 23 prescient buzzwords. According to Nick Lander’s in December’s Financial Times, “Michael Whiteman is a striking example of a lifetime well spent in the American hospitality business.” As the guy who (with his partner Joe Baum) created the world’s first food courts and five of New York’s three-star restaurants, including the legendary Windows on the World and the Rainbow Room, he knows a thing or two about what’s happening.