2011 FOOD TRENDS: The power of chefs; Eatery uptick coming; Hay is for restaurants

2011 American Salumi Calendar

Nibbles is a compendium of food, dining and beverage information and trends from the U.S. and the world edited by John Lehndorff (www.JohnLehndorff.com)

An interview with chef Thomas Keller reported by http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/11/27/keller.pay.quality/index.html:
“What’s happening in our marketplace today at a retail level is a direct result of chefs. Everything that you see in your grocery store today, in terms of the higher quality and more variety and more seasonality, is a result of what chefs have done in their restaurants. Chefs have set the example that consumers follow. So I want arugula now, or I want to to see a short rib or whatever it is. It’s being written about. What’s being produced in restaurants, people see it and say I want to get them.”

Reported by: http://www.foodproductdesign.com/news/2010/11/restaurant-sales-expected-to-improve.aspx:
Slightly improved U.S. restaurant sales in the second half of 2010 will help keep the industry on a steady track leading into next year, according to new findings from , the Fitch 2010 U.S. Restaurant Outlook. Offering compelling values along with variety and high-quality food and service will remain a key priority for the industry. According to the findings, continued weakness in consumer discretionary spending, same-store sales (SSS) trends for the restaurant industry have been negative factors this year; however, personal consumption and consequently restaurant traffic could improve as the economy continues to recover and unemployment peaks during 2010.

Reported by http://www.nrn.com/article/pies-top-2011-restaurant-trend-list#ixzz15eseTYsn:
Andrew Freeman, whose Andrew Freeman & Co. of San Francisco consults on marketing for restaurants and hotels nationwide, detailed some top trends for 2011:
The new mom and pop. Self-financed restaurants built on limited budgets are growing in number.
One-ingredient restaurants. “Restaurateurs are taking one ingredient and building full restaurants around them,” Freeman said. Following on the several-year trend of gourmet burgers, the trend is extending to grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs and sliders.
Mini plates. “Small plates were the big buzz word over the last couple of years,” Freeman said. “This year mini is the new buzz word. Mini everything: mini portions, mini desserts.”
Dirt. Abandoning sauces, some chefs are turning to dried, crumbled, powdered ingredients to add texture and flavor. Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, offers radishes with toasted-malt “dirt.”
Hearth-healthy. Wood-fired ovens will be used to roast vegetables and larger cuts of meat and whole animals.
Hot dogs and sausage shops. Examples include Brats Dogs & Wieners in New York. “They are moving from stands into restaurants,” Freeman said.Fried vegetables. Once-obscure vegetables are getting the crisp treatment with such items as fried Brussels sprouts, fried cauliflower and turnip chips.
Yogurt. It will show up as sun-dried, freeze-dried, smoked and pressed and in imported variations such as skyr from Iceland and labne from Lebanon.
Bellies. Goat and lamb belly are showing up on menus as pork-belly prices rise, producing such dishes as the lamb-belly watercress BLT at the Lonesome Dove in Fort Worth, Texas.

As far as popular ingredients go, Freeman suggests more influence by Necks (Lamb, beef, goat and pork); Kumquats; Smoking (olive oil, cumin and butter); Hay (Used for roasting and smoking, such as the leeks roasted on hay); and Honey. Chefs are developing partnerships with local beekeepers for use in sauces and dressings.

Complaints, tirades, comments, critiques? lehndorffj@aol.com

John Lehndorff is co-author with Kim Long of the American Salumi Calendar 2011, the first calendar devoted to cured meat artisans in the U.S. Lehndorff is a former caterer, nationally distributed newspaper food columnist and restaurant critic, author of a restaurant guide book, and one of America’s foremost pie experts.

The 2011 American Salumi Calendar: www.americansalumi.com

http://blogs.westword.com/cafesociety/2010/11/the_sexy_salumi_calendar_just.php

We’re willing to bet you’ve got at least one salted and cured meat enthusiast on your gift list this season, and it was for them that food writer and former restaurant critic John Lehndorff and author-illustrator Kim Long created the American Salumi Calendar. Part text book, part resource and part food porn, the 2011 calendar was made to celebrate the heritage of American cured meat, relating broadly to the cultural history of food production and the locavore movement.
It’s an educational compilation, featuring fun salumi facts, curing recipes, histories of sausage makers, definitions of different products and, of course, a sexy centerfold that displays lonzo, lamb coppa, duck prosciutto and pancetta, among other meats. And it’s sure to delight the food geeks in your family, who will read the thing until they memorize every single word, spouting off salumi facts at the dinner table. That’ll be us, actually, after we stop drooling over the close-ups of slices of silky prosciutto and the fat, meaty sandwich that is September’s feature.

FOOD TRENDS: The anti-celebrity chef; meat-infused cocktails; Ralph Lauren steaks

Nibbles is a compendium of food, dining and beverage information from the U.S. and the world edited by John Lehndorff

The Wall Street Journal recently chatted with chef Thomas Keller, 54,who maintains a three-acre garden at his French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley.   

 “I don’t understand the celebrity chef thing.  When I started cooking, it didn’t exist. There were certainly no national celebrities in the restaurant industry. There were a few associated with France where there has always been that deep respect for the culinary world. Our culture didn’t have that. Of course, what Americans do the best is to elevate things to unrealistic platforms without a lot of foundation behind it. We fall into this trap of having to have celebrities.”

Reported by Foodnavigator.com:

Currently, the African-American, Hispanic and Asian populations in the United States are responsible for about $299 billion of CPG (consumer packaged goods) spending, and Nielsen estimates that this could rise by as much as 25 percent over the next 10 years, to $373 billion in today’s money.

Time reports that the new wave among  mixologists is meat-infused cocktails. Here’s a recipe created by Eugene Shaw at Comme Ça in Los Angeles

The Butcher

1 strip beef jerky
1/4 oz. honey syrup
2 oz. aged rum
1 orange peel
dash of whiskey bitters

Soak beef jerky in aged rum for 30 minutes. Stir infused rum, honey syrup and bitters and pour into a martini glass.Flame an orange peel. Use slice of beef jerky for garnish. (To make honey syrup, mix 2 oz. honey with 1 oz. hot water. )

Reported by John Lehndorff:

The New York Times has reported that fashion icon Ralph Lauren is opening a new all-American eaterycalled Ralph’s serving burgers, steaks and crab cakes at his lavish new store in Paris. Ther restaurant will offer steaks made with Angus beef from the cattle on Lauren’s Double RL Ranch near Ridgway in southwestern Colorado. I think he got the idea from communications icon Ted Turner. The meat for the buffalo steaks, short ribs and burgers at Turner’s restauramt chain, Ted’s Montana Grill, come from Turner’s Montana ranch.

John Lehndorff is a Boulder, Co.-based food trend researcher, food writer and consultant. He is a former newspaper food editor and restaurant critic, author of a restaurant guide book, and executive director of the American Pie Council. Contact: lehndorffj@aol.com. Visit: www.JohnLehndorff.com.

FOOD TRENDS: Impatient food; Smoked lard; Pricey ice; Sexy chefs; Getttin’ some gnocchi

Reported by The Times of India:

Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that the mere exposure to fast food and related symbols can make people impatient, increasing preference for time saving products, and reducing willingness to save. “Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification,” said Chen-Bo Zhong, who co-wrote the paper with colleague Sanford DeVoe.

Reported by foodnavigator.com:

Children as young as three recognize and have preferences for different brands, according to new research published in the journal Psychology and Marketing. The 3 to 5-year-olds in this study generally thought of fast food, for example, as “fun, exciting, and tasty” and thought of cola brands as fun for reasons such as “the bubbles are fun,” and “lots of people like them.” 

From the Puget Sound Business Journal:

Some frozen seafood products may illegally contain the weight of ice in the price, according to a national investigation. Washington state was one of 17 states that participated in the seafood investigation in January and February, which discovered that some companies may be illegally charging up to $23 per pound for ice for those buying frozen seafood products. According to the National Conference on Weights and Measures, more than 21,000 consumer packages of seafood were examined during the two-month investigation. In some cases, the group said, inspectors found ice constituting up to 40 percent of the product weight.

Reported by bizjournals.com:
Five Guys Burgers and Fries ranked as the fastest-growing restaurant chain in the nation in 2009, according to Technomic. Tim Hortons ranked No. 2, followed by Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s, Wingstop, Noodles & Company, BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse, Chipotle, Firehouse Subs and Potbelly Sandwich Works.

From New York Magazine:  At Bark Hot Dogs, chef-owners Joshua Sharkey and Brandon Gillis get their dogs from an Austrian sausage-maker upstate, and baste them in housemade smoked lard butter. The sauerkraut is aged in oak barrels, and the beans are of the heirloom variety.

Now available at: www.jdfoods.net:

- Bacon-Flavored Mmmvelopes: the glue tastes like bacon.

The company also offers bacon-flavored salt, bacon-flavored mayo, bacon popcorn, and bacon ranch dressing.

Now available at www.gratefulpalate.com:

- Bacon Toilet Paper

The company also offers an artisan bacon-of-the-month club. 

 

 Colorado food news reported by John Lehndorff: 

Denver-distilled Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey won Artisan Whisky of the Year in the Malt Advocate Whisky awards. … Boulder-made Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter was named Best New Vegetarian Product by VegNews Magazine at the Natural Products Expo West. …  Frasca Food & Wine in Boulder was honored as one of the Top 40 Restaurants in the U.S. according to the Gayot travel guide. Meanwhile, Cosmopolitan’s list of “14 sizzllng hot chefs” includes Frasca’s Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson.  

Popeater.com asked chef Thomas Keller –  owner of the French Laundry, Per Se, Ad Hoc and five other eateries, to name his favorite movie of all time … except Ratatouille on which Keller consulted:

“I would prefer favorite movie scenes. The first is ‘Godfather III’ — when Andy Garcia was teaching Sofia Coppola how to make gnocchi. And ‘Goodfellas,’ when Ray Liotta was teaching his brother how to slice garlic with a razor blade to make the tomato sauce.”

Listen to Radio Nibbles, John Lehndorff’s weekly food conversation and  commentary program,  at 8:25 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU – 885 FM, 1390 AM, and online at  www.KGNU.org.

Comments: lehndorffj@aol.com

Visit: www.johnlehndorff.com

U.S. TRENDS: Blame boomers for supper slump; “important” eateries

If you are a restaurateur, you’re justifiably worried. If you own a discount natural foods supermarket with wide aisles, you’re pretty optimistic at a new study by NPD, a market research firm. If you’re a Baby Boomer, get ready to be blamed yet again.  Supper is the restaurant industry’s largest sales generator but the meal has been the weakest performing meal period for the past decade and is still declining. According to the study, multiple factors have contributed to the decline in supper visits, the foremost being the recession and an aging U.S. population. The sheer number of aging Boomers has increased the importance of more mature adults to the supper occasion. Even before the current economic situation, consumers were shifting how they addressed their needs to feed themselves and their families at supper.  They’ve started to cook more at home.

-   The Wall Street Journal recently did a Q&A with chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley:  “I’m put off by chains, and even by people who have more than one restaurant. I know how hard it is to take care of one. You have to divide your time or ask someone else to really act as an owner. But very often that person doesn’t take responsibility the way the owner does.”  

- In its third annual published dining survey, Opinionated About Dining has named the 30 Most Important
Restaurants in the U.S., although it may well be the least important organization rating restaurants today. Topping their list of extremely expensive eateries is The French Laundry, Yountville, CA, followed by Per Se, New York – both owned by chef Thomas Keller; Masa, New York; Manresa, Los Gatos, CA; Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills; Mini-Bar, Washington,DC; Urasawa, Beverly Hills, Ca; Jean Georges, New York; Alinea, Chicago, Il; Corton, New York, NY; Others in the Top 30 include Momofuku Ko, New York; L’ Atelier de Joel Robuchon, New York; and McCrady’s, Charleston, SC.

JohnLehndorff.com
Comments: lehndorffj@aol.com

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