2011 "What's Hot" Chef Survey Reveals Hottest Menu Trends

The annual National Restaurant Association survey of American Culinary Federation member chefs is one of the industry's leading culinary forecasts. More than 1,500 professional chefs gave their professional opinion of whether 226 culinary items will be a "hot trend," "yesterday's news," or "perennial favorite" on restaurant menus in 2011.

The top 10 menu trends for next year will be locally sourced meats and seafood, locally grown produce, sustainability as a culinary theme, nutritious kids’ dishes, hyper-local items, children’s nutrition as a culinary theme, sustainable seafood, gluten-free/food allergy-conscious items, back-to-basics cuisine and farm-branded ingredients.

Rounding out the top 20 hot menu trends are artisan liquor, locally-produced wine and beer, smaller portions for a smaller price, organic produce, nutrition as a culinary theme, culinary cocktails, newly fabricated cuts of meat, fruit/vegetable children’s side items, ethnic-inspired breakfast items and artisan cheese.

Topping categories within the survey are: street food-inspired items and amuse bouche/bite-size hors d’oeuvre in appetizers; black-forbidden rice and quinoa in sides/starches; ethnic-inspired and traditional ethnic items in breakfast/brunch; house-made ice cream and bite-size items in desserts; regional and fusion in ethnic cuisines; artisan cheeses and ethnic cheeses in ingredients; sous-vide and braising in preparation methods; and specialty iced tea and organic coffee in nonalcoholic beverages.

Also included in the survey were questions about recession strategies, operational trends, promoting nutrition and using social media. The chefs said that offering value specials, simplifying menus to save on prep labor and ingredients, and increased marketing efforts were the most successful strategies for building business during the period of economic weakness.

Thirty percent of the chefs said that mobile food trucks and pop-up restaurants will be the hottest operational trend in 2011; 18 percent said restaurants with gardens will be the top trend, and 17 percent said social media marketing. In addition, 55 percent of the chefs said they are currently using social media for professional purposes, and another 16 percent said they plan to start using such channels.


Here's a link to a PDF File with the results of the survey
http://www.restaurant.org/pdfs/research ... t_2011.pdf

This is interesting Dan, thanks for posting. And haven't many of the chefs/ entrepreneurs on LHB been discussing these very things? Proud to see our Louisville culinary artists up there on the edge with the rest of the world!

Under Meat/Main dishes, this is my favorite:
#4, Newly fabricated cuts
of meat (e.g. Denver
steak, pork flat iron,
Petite Tender)

[Robin Garr]

Locally produced wine? Sorry. I could utter a fairly nuanced rant about this, but to keep things simple, look at this morning's weather. Napa Valley this isn't.

It feels like Antarctica outside.

Locally produced wine? Sorry. I could utter a fairly nuanced rant about this, but to keep things simple, look at this morning's weather. Napa Valley this isn't.

Let me preface this by saying that I have no real wine knowledge aside from geographical awareness of wine growing areas in the U.S.

Are there no local wines that are drinkable? Napa Valley aside, do we have a climate favorable to any style of wine that is drinkable? Washington State, upstate New York, California......haven't all of those producers figured out how to work within their climates to produce fairly good wines? I would think upstate New York would have a harder time climate wise than us producing quality wine.

edited to say thanks to Dan for posting this and sorry for the threadjack. I'm too lazy to start a different thread this morning.

Locally produced wine? Sorry. I could utter a fairly nuanced rant about this, but to keep things simple, look at this morning's weather. Napa Valley this isn't.

Let me preface this by saying that I have no real wine knowledge aside from geographical awareness of wine growing areas in the U.S.

Are there no local wines that are drinkable? Napa Valley aside, do we have a climate favorable to any style of wine that is drinkable? Washington State, upstate New York, California......haven't all of those producers figured out how to work within their climates to produce fairly good wines? I would think upstate New York would have a harder time climate wise than us producing quality wine.

edited to say thanks to Dan for posting this and sorry for the threadjack. I'm too lazy to start a different thread this morning.

Maybe some ice wines?

[Robin Garr]

Are there no local wines that are drinkable? Napa Valley aside, do we have a climate favorable to any style of wine that is drinkable? Washington State, upstate New York, California......haven't all of those producers figured out how to work within their climates to produce fairly good wines? I would think upstate New York would have a harder time climate wise than us producing quality wine.

edited to say thanks to Dan for posting this and sorry for the threadjack. I'm too lazy to start a different thread this morning.

It's okay, the most successful conversations in the forum are often those with multiple threads. I don't have time for a long, detailed answer either, but let me briefly respond.

* Kentucky and Indiana wines are drinkable. But they're not competitive. It's easier to make better wines cheaper elsewhere. That isn't to say that Huber or Turtle Run or Smith-Berry or Lovers Leap can't make a decent wine, but it's sort of like what Dr. Johnson said about the dog that was trained to dance: The surprise is that it can dance at all, not that it can dance well.

* New York State (and Ontario) show off another issue: Their winters are cold, but their summers aren't as unrelentingly hot and humid as ours. They can grow wine grapes designed for Germany, and plant them near water (Finger Lakes or Lakes Ontario and Erie) so lake effect snows and coastal temperature moderation protect the vines. In the Ohio River Valley, it's the mild winters with occasional "hundred-year freezes", and hot, humid summers that encourage mold and vineyard pests, that make vine-growing an iffy, and rarely commercially feasible, operation.

Generally speaking, around the world, "Mediterranean" climates like southern France, Italy and coastal Spain are best for wine. A continental climate like Germany is second-best, requiring more selectivity in grape varieties and knowledge in vineyard management. Our four-season, hot-summer climate is poor; and subtropical or subartic is basically impossible.

But we make good beer!

Locally produced wine? Sorry. I could utter a fairly nuanced rant about this, but to keep things simple, look at this morning's weather. Napa Valley this isn't.

Jeremy J likes this post.

* Kentucky and Indiana wines are drinkable. But they're not competitive. It's easier to make better wines cheaper elsewhere. That isn't to say that Huber or Turtle Run or Smith-Berry or Lovers Leap can't make a decent wine, but it's sort of like what Dr. Johnson said about the dog that was trained to dance: The surprise is that it can dance at all, not that it can dance well.

Wine is one of the few cases where I really do not believe in buying local. And this partly explains why. I certainly don't buy wine from major corporations like Taylor or Gallo I do buy it from smaller producers (mostly California or at least west coast) because not only do they make excellent wines but many of them are a very good value. Obviously as Robin has already mentioned climate is one of the big problems. Several other problems include the fact local producers haven't been producing long enough to be able to make the best wine they can give them what they have. Another problem is they all are very low volume so they don't have the opportunity to blend the various varietals to make the best uses them.

Actually I'm originally from New York and I don't like the wines produced there very much either for many of the same reasons. About the only one I even drink is Bully Hill and that is more because of the story behind it than the wine, part of the story is here: Walter S Taylor.

Under Meat/Main dishes, this is my favorite:
#4, Newly fabricated cuts
of meat (e.g. Denver
steak, pork flat iron,
Petite Tender)

This refers to different cuts off of different primals than the usual Rib, Strip or Tenderloin
For instance, Flat Iron Steak which is quite popular these days.
The beef cut is actually a top blade steak derived from the tender top blade roast. The roast is separated into two pieces by cutting horizontally through the center to remove the heavy connective tissue.
Or the Denver Steak which is basically a glorified cleaned up piece of chuck that they can now charge $5.99 a lb. for instead of grinding it up for ground chuck for $2.99 a lb.
Or my personal favorite, Casino Roast also known for years as Clod Heart which comes from the shoulder chuck and was marketed as an economical carving item for buffets rather than expensive Ribeyes for Prime Rib. It's a tasty cut of meat, except for the connective tissue that runs through the center and you can't cut out.
You will see much more of this sort of thing as meat producers aren't raising anything near the number of head that they were prior to the recession. When the bottom fell out of the fine dining market in October-November of 2008, there were a lot of bargains to be had for prime beef as the market demand collapsed. At that time, I was loading up on and freezing Prime graded PSMOs for the almost the same price as Choice. Many producers got burned badly in the aftermath and meat prices will remain higher for the unforseable future as production stays much lower than it was.