I eat at restaurants as many as three to four times a week, so often that I’m observing and experiencing trends in real time.
In May I was at Vespertine in Culver City, California, shortly after it reopened from a four-year pandemic closure, gushing over its stunningly beautiful salad course. The dish was a wild onion custard, studded with crunchy pea pods and topped with an explosion of lupine and wisteria blossoms, with sprigs of lemon thyme. The dish was so modern and refreshing I would have been satisfied if the meal ended there.
I kept thinking about that salad and then began to see pansies and nasturtium blossoms sprouting on salads and garnishing sea bass. Flowers add flavor, color, and dimension while being regeneratively farmed and good for the environment.
As more restaurants strive to be more sustainable, I expect a full flush of flowers as a key ingredient on menus in 2025. It would be a natural evolution of the plant-forward cooking trend that evolved from dietary restriction, a move toward the innovative exploration—and celebration—of vegetables.
Restaurant trends can shape not only the culinary zeitgeist but also culture.
West African ingredients like suya spice and egusi have made their way out of neighborhood specialty stores thanks to restaurants like Tatiana in New York and Ikoyi in London.
Caviar, once the hallmark of luxury, is now merely a condiment for house-made potato chips or game-changing chicken nuggets like those at Coqodaq, galvanizing yet another trend: the restaurant-as-club aesthetic.
The most exciting trend I saw across the landscape was a spirit of collaboration, which is the underlying theme for the 2024 edition of Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants. Around the globe chefs are coming together with ingredients from their cultures, remixing menus, from food festivals to fine dining.