1 6
Food & beverage with stories behind them are trendy. So is cutting down on waste and labor.
This drink has all of those, and is also served in Bay 6, a micro-bar in Wash, a former carwash in Nashville that has been turned into a foodservice incubator.
Foodservice incubators are trendy too.
For this $15 drink, which is named for a quote from writer Wendell Berry about managing land carefully, managing partner Beau Gaultier starts by infusing cachaça with the spent grounds of Café du Monde coffee, which is dark roast coffee blended with chicory.
Separately he combines pineapple husk with sugar and citric acid and then adds day-old pineapple juice.
He combines 2 ounces of the coffee cachaça with 1.5 ounces of the acidified pineapple syrup, shakes them with ice and strains that through a fine mesh sieve into a coupe that he garnishes with a dehydrated lime wheel.
“The result is a Cuban Daiquiri-esque cocktail that starts juicy but ends bitter,” Gaultier said. “Every ingredient is a complimentary flavor of every other one: Chicory plays nice with coffee, coffee goes great with funky cachaça, and cachaça and pineapple are a match made in heaven.”
He added that, although it’s a relatively labor-intensive drink on the back end, at service it just requires two touches, saving a lot of time. Also, the use of citric acid and leftover parts of the pineapple make it much less expensive than using fresh lemon or lime juice.
Cereal milk has been a trendy concept for quite a while now, since Christina Tosi and David Chang opened Milk Bar in New York City in 2008, and co-branding with cereal and snack companies has been happing with increasing frequency as restaurants and suppliers see the mutual advantage of capitalizing on each other’s fans.
Thus come these limited-time treats from Krispy Kreme, for which the doughnut chain created a new cinnamon milk glaze and then garnished doughnuts with Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal.
Spicy ranch dressing is a growing trend. A few years ago it was often being spiked with Sriracha sauce — something that celebrity chef Richard Blais liked to call “Srirancha” — but now Buffalo sauce is the preferred mixer with ranch, as shown by Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen’s new sandwich, which takes its popular chicken sandwich and dresses it in a new sauce.
Cold foam — aerated milk, often sweetened — was first introduced to Starbucks’ Reserve Roastery in Seattle and rolled out nationwide in 2018. Since then, much like the Pumpkin Spice Latte it introduced in 2003, many coffeehouses have copied it, helping to make it a bona fide beverage trend.
So Starbucks has upped the ante with chocolate version of cold foam, which it has added as a permanent item spooned over cold brew coffee sweetened with vanilla syrup.
The trend of using local and seasonal vegetables has been extended to pizza at Myke’s Pizza in Mesa, Ariz., where owner and pizzaiolo Myke Olsen makes a $17 pie with fresh mozzarella and Idiazabal cheese, baby kale from local Steadfast Farms, golden raisins and a charred lemon relish.
Olsen says the sweetness of the raisins tempers the bitterness of the kale and sourness of the lemon. He says the Idiazabal, a Spanish sheep’s milk cheese, has the gaminess of pecorino cheese and the mild nuttiness of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Angelo Sosa, executive chef and founder of Tia Carmen, which opened at the end of April at the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa, uses local ingredients for this $20 dish inspired by Chinese dandan noodles.
He grinds mesquite pods into flour and mixes them with water and salt to make the noodles.
He seasons local lamb with New Mexican Chimayo chiles and Hatch green chiles, paprika, cumin and Szechuan peppercorns and slowly braises it with corn, carrots and tomatoes. He skims the lamb fat and tosses the noodles in that. He plates the lamb, tops it with the noodles and garnishes the dish with cilantro and epazote.
