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Menu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Red Robin, and Jimmy John’sMenu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Red Robin, and Jimmy John’s

Plus innovation at Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar, Bellagreen, Big Shoulders Coffee, Bluestone Lane, Bonanza and Ponderosa Steakhouses, Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Cicis Pizza, Cinnabon, Cotton Patch Cafe, Dig, Dunkin, Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, Freebirds World Burrito, Hat Creek Burger Company, Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, Krispy Kreme, Legal Sea Foods, Lime Fresh, Marco’s Pizza, Mission Taco Joint, Newk’s Eatery, Paris Baguette, Peter Piper Pizza, Roy Rogers, Velvet Taco, and Vitality Bowls

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

October 13, 2023

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 Menu Tracker

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Menu Tracker: New items from Taco Bell, Red Robin, and Jimmy John’s

Taco Bell is testing chicken nuggets. It’s just testing them in one market, but it’s still kind of a big deal.

Red Robin has revamped its menu, and seasonal limited-time offers are also now in place at Bellagreen, Dig, Newk’s Eatery, Roy Rogers, and Cotton Patch Café.

Dunkin’ has launched its Halloween LTO’s, and so have Applebee’s, Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, Krispy Kreme, Paris Baguette, and Peter Piper Pizza.

Peter Piper is the first this year in what no doubt will be a long list of pizzerias offering pies shaped like pumpkins and decorated like Jack-o’-lanterns. If that’s all that a pizza chain is doing for Halloween they probably won’t make it into Menu Tracker, because it’s pretty much expected at this point.

Big Shoulders Coffee and Bluestone Lane are just now offering their seasonal pumpkin spice lattes, which is rather refreshing, and Marco’s Pizza is finally jumping on the hot honey bandwagon.

Cicis Pizza and Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana both have pies topped with potatoes, which is in fact a common pizza topping in Rome, and  Vitality Bowls has new oatmeal and hummus.

Bonanza and Ponderosa have prime rib, Freebird’s World Burrito has birria, and Hat Creek Burger Company is putting green chile in its queso.

Jimmy John’s has a chicken-and-ranch sub with crunchy tortilla strips.

Related:Taco Bell is trying out chicken nuggets

Legal Sea Foods is teaming up with a local Massachusetts distillery for a special cocktail, Lime Fresh is teaming up with another Florida brand, 4 Rivers Smokehouse, for a special taco, and Mission Taco Joint has a taco named for a breast cancer survivor.

Carrabba’s is continuing its weekly offer of a special pasta. It has two more such offers to go, unlike Velvet Taco, which has a Weekly Taco Feature that goes on into infinity.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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