Top 10 Food Trends of 2009

As predicted by Epicurious, anyway.  My comments added:

1. "Value" is the new "Sustainable"
These days, the economy dictates our cooking and shopping decisions: Bargains are in, no matter where they come from. 

No kidding.  And there are few things more economical than cooking from scratch.  My golden rule in this household of two: make a full batch and freeze half.  Just last night I froze 4 stuffed Mexican squashes and half a dozen bean and cheese burritos.  Easy to reheat and no leftovers get thrown away.  Also, menu planning is the best way to ensure no food goes to waste.  Most of the food articles published lately has been about saving cash when you're dining out, and I've started to compile a best of the best happy hour guide over on vita.mn.

2. The Compost Pile is the new Flower Garden
Growing your own now refers to vegetables, not just herbs, and that will in turn help feed the gardener's compost pile. Live worm garnishes, however, will not make it to the house salad. 

Chiggity-check.  Even I've got a compost bin in the backyard now, and I don't even have a garden.  Between that and recycling, we produce about one 13-gallon bag of trash every 3 weeks.  Did you know there are at least 10 local restaurants that compost their food scraps? 

3. Peruvian is the new Thai
You thought Peruvian cuisine was all about seviche, maybe? Guess again: Peru boasts culinary influences from Spanish, Basque, African, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, and British immigrants. Pisco Sour, anyone? 

While I don't know of any strictly Peruvian restaurants in town, La Hacienda does have a Peruvian menu section.  However, there's certainly no shortage of that general region's cuisine, with all the Ecuadorian and Colombian immigrants here.  Head to La Gran Colombia, Sabor Latino, Los Andes, and Guayaquil for dishes from the region.

4. Noodle Bars are the new Sushi Joints
With some seafood being suspect or overfished and raw fish prices high, noodles make complete sense. If there's no ramen, udon, or soba shop in your neck of the woods, there will be soon. 

Yes, please!  Noodle soups are easy and cheap to make, not to mention healthy if you do it right.  I make a simple one at home with no-beef broth, shiitake mushrooms, soba noodles, ginger, garlic, scallions and tamari.  My only wish for moto-i (the new, non-sushi Japanese sake brewpub in Uptown) is that they add noodle soups to the menu.  For now, the best is definitely Tanpopo Noodle Shop.

5. Ginger is the new Mint
Move over, mojitos. Ginger beers and ginger cocktails (like the Ginger Rogers, Gin Gin Mule, and Ginger Smash) are bubbling up at places like The Violet Hour in Chicago, the Clock Bar in San Francisco, and Matsugen in New York. 

Okay, I'm fine with this as long as it's not overdone.  Ginger is a strong, spicy flavor, people, so don't get carried away.  A hint, an essence.  Don't muddle 10 slices into my drink and be surprised when I'm complaining that my throat is burning.

6. Smoking is the new Frying
You know how everything tastes better fried? Well, almost everything tastes better smoked, too, and that includes cocktails. Bartenders are smoking their bourbons (Eben Freeman at Tailor, for example), and chefs, recognizing the national craze for BBQ, are smoking more than just salmon and ribs: nuts, salts, even smoked steelhead roe (at Chicago's Alinea). Who says smoking's bad for you? 

I've always been a fan of smoked paprika, as there's just no flavor like it.  And go ahead and smoke my bourbon, I don't care.  I've also recently reached the conclusion that smoked Gruyère goes with everything.

7. Regional Roasters are the new Starbucks
It's come full circle. What started as a local coffee phenomenon migrated to other cities and turned Americans into java junkies. Then the chain overexpanded and overreached, and the little neighborhood coffee roasters thrive again, like Stumptown (Portland, OR), Bluebottle (San Francisco), and La Colombe (Philly). 

I stopped drinking coffee--I know, right?  I barely started!--so I have no commentary on this one.  A preliminary Google search yielded White Rock Coffee Roasters and The Roastery.  Doesn't Dunn Bros. roast in-house?

8. Portland (Maine) is the new Portland (Oregon)
Abundance of great chefs, restaurants, and local foodies? Check, check, and check. Want examples? Visit Five Fifty-Five, Hugo's, and Fore Street to start. 9. Rustic Food is the new Molecular Gastronomy Wacky-weird-science cuisine that requires fancy-schmancy equipment doesn't necessarily make food taste better, and more often than not it adds needless complexity (there are exceptions). Most importantly, no one really wants to do this at home. Expect to see comfort food stage a comeback. Again. 

Okay, whatevs.  Seriously, when is Minneapolis going to get its due?  We are not a suburb of Chicago.

10. "Top-Rated" is the new "Critic's Pick"
Power to the people; single critics are a dying breed. Why believe what one person says when you can read and reflect on what hundreds think?

Just consider the source.  A lot of sites suffer from what I call CitySearch Syndrome: blatant shilling or total flaming by "anonymous," one-review users.  Check the Chowhound boards for real, competent reviews of restaurants and bars, both here and abroad. 

I say don't discount the critics, though.  All the folks we read in the papers every week also have blogs (except Rick Nelson, for some reason), where insider info, candid comments and great tips can always be found.  Although not usually food-related, I like John Ewoldt's blog for the deal alerts, and I like Mecca Bos-Williams' candid-without-trying-to-be-cutesy cooking and dining out notes.  Of course I love Andrew, and Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl has only gotten better the last couple years; she's more in touch than ever with what Twin Citizens really want to know when it comes to local dining.

Amateur food bloggers are a dime a dozen now, as is evident by the number of people seen every night snapping photos of their dinner plates before diving in.  (I've never taken photos in restaurants for the purpose of a review; maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, but I guess I'd still rather write the thousand words.  Also, I'm a horrible photographer.)  But honestly, other than the critics, I don't really read local food blogs.  I'll come across them occasionally but get irritated almost immediately due to one or all of my top three food blogger pet peeves:

1. A food blogger who doesn't cook at home.  The top, top offense.  One has no business criticizing ingredients, texture, temperature, construction, basically anything if they'd need to reference a cookbook to make a cream sauce.

2. A food blogger with a palate that can't identify the most basic ingredients, and doesn't even bother to try.  Close to the top.  What are these little green flecks in this tasty golden dipping sauce?  It's dill mustard, dummy, and it says so right on the menu.

3. A food blogger who reviews a restaurant that's been around for years.  Useful to recent Twin Cities transplants, but I like to read opinions on the newest hot spots.  Don't snap a blurry picture of your risotto from Bellanotte and tell me it was "creamy"--it's risotto, it's supposed to be creamy--and expect readers to be impressed by your review of a place that opened almost 5 years ago.  If you're just getting to it now, I assume your palate is about as cosmopolitan as your prefab townhouse condo.

The few local food bloggers I enjoyed reading have simply stopped writing the past year or two, which really sucks.  A couple of my friends will occasionally write entertaining food-related posts (like Coco and Aaron), and Reetsy had a great thing going with You Are Where You Eat, but I think she needs a little kick in the pants to fire that up again. 

A-hem.

Comments

[kelly]

Is Machu Picchu Restaurante still open? I was there one time and was pretty impressed.

[s4xton]

Great post, both on the trends as well as the food blogging jabs. They're jabs, but I agree with you. I also think you've labelled me well: you didn't call me a food blogger, you said I write "entertaining food-related posts." I don't know if anyone else has more accurately described what I do. Many people label me as a "pizza reviewer" and a "pizza expert" (and shit, sometimes "cat expert" and "cupcake reviewer" etc. etc.) but honestly many times I'm asking "what that green shit is" too and hell, making pancakes, pasta and grilled cheese at home doesn't count for cooking.

I understand the difference between a real reviewer and someone that has fun posting about experiences at restaurants. I think a lot of people forget the difference. If you ever read Bill post about a restaurant, it is the farthest thing from a review but many times very entertaining and many people trust his personality and taste. His posts also seem to generate a lot more traffic (and therefore dollars) than mine do. Point I'm getting at is that I wanted to bring up almost the same thing: just because you have a website and you post about restaurants doesn't make you a food reviewer. That said, there certainly is a market out there for people like me: people that post about their experiences and thoughts (or as you said, people that write entertaining food-related posts). Like me. :-)

Then again, perhaps this is me trying to draw lines when the lines are fading away. (I've also said in the past that Twitter is about what you're doing right now and that there's a major difference between blogging and journalling online.)

[Rich G.]

Machu Picchu closed -- Moto-i opened in its place.

And just a heads up, Alexis: Moto-i has soba and ramen soups on the menu.

[Kate]

Wow... I'm really kind of shocked at how incredibly pretentious you come off as being in this post. I enjoy reading your blog for the most part, but I wasn't expecting such an authoritative post about who should write about food. I actually stopped reading chowhound, for reasons not unlike this post of yours: because of how angry the snobby people on there made me... and anyone who knows me thinks I'm about the biggest food snob there is!

Just a few thoughts:

1. A food blogger that doesn't cook at home. Seriously? Just because they don't cook themselves doesn't mean that they are ignorant about food. If you dislike ignorance, just say that, but don't assume that people who don't have a lot of home cooking experience can't or don't know what they're talking about.

2.A food blogger with a palate that can't identify ingredients. Well, if the menu says there is a dill mustard sauce on top of the chicken and they don't know what it is, then we're just talking about an idiot in general, and of course I don't want to read what they have to say. I guess I understand this annoyance.

3. A food blogger who reviews a restaurant that's been around for years. I totally disagree with this. How many years are we talking about anyway? Do you think only new restaurants should be reviewed? Chefs move from restaurant to restaurant all the time, and just because a restaurant is an institution, doesn't mean there aren't changes (or standards) that aren't work reviewing.

That being said, there are only a handful of MSP food related blogs that I read... most to keep myself informed of the local happenings. I don't entirely trust people's opinions of restaurants , but do like to get ideas of places to go, both new and old, and specific dishes that they have loved

[Alexis]

Thanks for your comments, guys. Rich, the soba noodles at moto-i are a cold salad, not a soup, and the ramen is served in a a chicken and pork broth. I could just ask for the noodles in the dashi from the miso, but I suppose at that point I'm making my own dish and not having what the chef put on the menu.

Aaron, yes. A blogger who writes food-related posts and occasional restaurant reviews is different than a blogger who creates a blog specifically for that purpose. And when the latter continually peppers their posts with negative criticism based on subjects they don't know a damn thing about, their ignorance just shines through.

Kate, welcome to my blog where you can read my opinions on all sorts of different topics. Pretentious? I've been called worse. But as a paid freelance food writer, occasional restaurant industry consultant and former caterer, I'm more than entitled to think my opinions are worth voicing for the readers of my blog. As well, I allow readers to voice their opinions here in the comments, as you have done.

[s4xton]

A blogger who writes food-related posts and occasional restaurant reviews is different than a blogger who creates a blog specifically for that purpose.

I know you knew this, I was just using your site as a platform to vent.

[geoff]

Excellent thought provoking post Alexis...maybe you should stay home sick more often.

I'm sorta with Kate in that I think there is a place for folks like Lazy Lightning or We Got Served in the food-blogger world. For better or worse, the internet has flattened the world of food reviewing. My one wish is that more food bloggers would use their blog subtitles to self-identify their niche (ala your "Confessions of a Minneapolis Concierge", which is perfectly concise and concisely perfect). Perhaps something like "We Got Served...can we have some ketchup with this?" or "Chow And Again...expat New York TV personality dishes on paltry flyover country food scene".

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...Aaron's pizza posts rock. I'm going to Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix next Friday night, and I wish I could take him with me to see what he thinks.

[Erin]

Alexis - I wanted to let you know that I really enjoy reading your blog - I've been following it for awhile.

It does make me a little sad to know that a blog that my husband and I started to motivate us to try new restaurants and learn more about food can make people so annoyed. I know you didn't call us out by name, but I felt compelled to respond after reading the last comment. I also am well aware that a lot of people really don't like blogs like ours. Oh well! We plan to keep writing as long as we still want to try new restaurants.

I am very sorry if anyone takes what we say as anything more than us writing about our experiences - I have been thinking about taking off the last "recommendation" part of our posts for exactly that reason.

[Alexis]

Geoff, I agree that there are certainly people who read and enjoy those types of blogs, I'm just stating that I'm not one of them and here's why. This is a touchy subject, apparently! You're totally on point: posting recipes and writing about restaurants is just one facet of Girl Friday, which is why I've never called it a food blog (see also Lazy Lightning). I just happen to dine out a lot and also know most of the chefs and GMs in this town. Combine that with the innate desire to put thoughts to words and here we are.

Erin, I just checked out your blog and, in my opinion, it's done very well. High five for good photos ;) Actually, looking at your most recent posts, your blog conveys more than most others in terms of total experience, which is absolutely useful to readers.

[Moe]

I'll just add that Portland, Maine is an amazing food town, especially for the size of the city. It's a weekend getaway spot for those in Boston and NYC, with the some amazing restaurants.

[Rich G.]

Alexis, you didn't specify traditional dashi broth. You just said noodle soup. It's the age old complaint of men everywhere -- I'm not a mind reader. ;-)

But the last time I was at Moto-i they had a soba soup special they said they were trying out for the menu. Apparently it didn't make it yet.

[Terra home composters]

Composting does seem to be really catching on! I remember 5-10 years ago when composting was viewed as a hippy environmentalist activity. Those days are long gone now, even my local municipality is taking action with a "green box" initiative where our compost is picked up every week!

[Alexis]

Oh, any old veggie broth would be super, I'm not picky. The dashi just happens to be the only veggie broth on the menu.

[Rich G.]

Isn't dashi traditionally made with kombu and bonito though? I thought you didn't eat fishies?

[Reetsyburger]

Aaron's pizza writing and photographs are WIN.

Composting is not as bad as I remember being when I was a kid. For some reason, it was really gross back in the 80s.

Economic viability is an essential value of sustainability. Sustainable systems should be profitable and environmentally sound systems that strengthen communities. It saddens me that value is the new sustainable. Sustainability and value should be synchronous.

I get excited about food, just like I get excited about shoes, sawdust, and heavy metal. I don't consider myself an food writer, nor a critic, but I am most certainly a food enthusiast.

I created a separate food blog because I had many readers in my profession (sustainable agriculture) who were interested in reading more about my observations about the relationship among restaurants, vendors, and local/regional producers, but who were clearly NOT interested in reading about my personal antics. I'm not confident that I made the right choice, but I know that there are readers of You Are Where You Eat who appreciate the dedicated food blog.

Thanks for a kick in the pants, Girl Friday. *high five*

[Deborah]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Deborah

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[ed]

i love reading your blog whenever i can, i dont often get the time these days, but usually have a quick read in my dinner break or just after i get home from work, sometimes its quite interesting reading - thanks.

[rachel]

everyones downgrading what they but in the food department, all part of costcutting.