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MenuMasters: Everything popcorn, bulgogi fries and cocktails honoring womenMenuMasters: Everything popcorn, bulgogi fries and cocktails honoring women

Plus a look at Subway’s ‘Eat Fresh Refresh’ and a plant-based side without the protein

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

March 11, 2022

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The Everything bagel, which was invented around 1980, had a fine and relatively quiet existence until the past few years, when the combination of granulated garlic and onion, poppy seeds, sesame seeds and salt began appearing as a flavoring in other foods, on the rims of cocktail glasses, in the spice section of supermarkets and elsewhere. Now, as you’ll see, it’s on popcorn.

Nashville hot chicken had a similarly quite presence, existing only in Nashville and only at a couple of out-of-the restaurants, until the whole country decided that dipping fried chicken in spicy oil was a good idea. Its latest iteration is on an eggs Benedict dish in New Orleans.

Loaded fries get the culinary mashup treatment in Houston, where they might commonly be topped with chili, but at Hawker Street Food Bar are topped with bulgogi.

Meatless Mondays, a movement in which people would refrain from eating meat on the first day of the work week, never really caught on, but meatless options are now a way of life, and an increasingly popular one, so Sweetfin, a poke concept, recently introduced a line of vegan side dishes, including one with spicy black rice noodles.

Subway, the world’s largest chain in terms of number of units, has spent the past year or so refreshing its menu, and it is exhibiting many of its new meats and one of its new bread options in new Italian-inspired hero, the Mozza Meat Sub.

Related:MenuMasters: Middle Eastern-Mexican mashups and fast-casual vegetable dishes

And finally, for Women’s History Month, the high-end Asian fusion concept Tao is offering a line of cocktails named for inspiring Asian women.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

 

 

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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