Axios - ""Chaos cooking" and TikTok will be 2023's big restaurant trends"
Dishes that are an aggressive mash-up of global flavors — like sashimi tostadas and tandoori spaghetti — will hit restaurant menus in 2023, a style that's been dubbed "chaos cooking," food prognosticators say.
- Those concoctions will live or die depending on how well they play on TikTok, the latest must-use channel for restaurateurs.
Why it matters: With dining out almost back to pre-pandemic levels, people continue to crave novelty in their meals as well as video-friendly foods they can show off to their friends (butter boards, anyone?).
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Driving the news: A review of year-end restaurant prediction reports reveals many common themes, such as the rise of "eatertainment," new interest in Latin American cuisine and nonalcoholic booze, and the emergence of a jumbled culinary genre called chaos cooking.
- Eater describes chaos cooking as "a new, brash food style" that's "part neo-fusion, part middle finger."
- Examples include pork keema papadi nachos from Nashville's Chauhan Ale & Masala House and pastrami tacos from Delirama in Berkeley, California.
- Evidence this is going mainstream? TGI Fridays' new curry-laden FRIjitas with tandoori chicken.
It's part of a trend called "flavor tourism" that has consumers seeking "to expand their palates with unique global fare," according to the National Restaurant Association's 2023 culinary forecast.
- On the rise, per the group: Hot sauces (pun intended) like Sriracha, ganjang (Korean soy sauce) and guajillo chili sauce.
What we'll see in 2023: Mondays are trending as a dining-out night, as they're seen as "an extension of the weekend" in the hybrid work era, Soo says.
- Expect more showy tableside experiences beyond the familiar guacamole-prep ritual. Hot spots such as Miller & Lux in San Francisco turn Caesar salad into an artfully choreographed cheese-and-lettuce-slicing event.
- Colombian restaurants are having a moment, as is other Latin and South American fare, as well as Hawaiian cuisine.
- Charcuterie boards, elevated bar snacks and loaded fries — with flavors like ghost pepper and hot honey — are going strong.
- And all bets are that the chicken sandwich wars will persist.
The intrigue: There's an arms race to create video-friendly dishes for TikTok, which is rapidly supplanting Instagram and Facebook as the go-to social platform for people deciding where to eat.
- "Cheese pulls, sauce drips, drink pours, tableside preparations are all key," Mike Kostyo of Datassential tells FSR Magazine, a food service periodical.
- People "don't just want that static shot of a dish against a nice background — they want there to be some action," he said.
- While search engines remain the #1 way people discover new eateries, TikTok "is becoming the marketing channel that restaurants can't ignore," per BentoBox, a restaurant tech vendor.
