Even at Chez Panisse, the Berkeley, Calif., restaurant where Alice Waters got the whole local-ingredients trend started, two out of three wines on a recent evening — the wine list changes daily — did not come from the acclaimed wine regions that begin only 25 miles away.
Call it haute barnyard, greenmarket, farm-to-table, or locavore the hyperseasonal, cult-of-ingredients trend reaches lofty heights at this homey establishment in Fort Greene.
Nation's Restaurant News reports on restaurant consultant firm Andrew Freeman & Co.'s restaurant and ingredient trend predictions for the coming year, and if they're accurate, restaurant patrons in 2011 are looking at the Year of Pie, along with a lot of neck meat, whey, kumquats and pimento cheese for good measure.
Healthy meals and transparency about ingredients are trends expected to drive sales in the industry this year, according to the National Restaurant Association's "What's Hot" 2017 forecast.
Ms. Michaels is among those preparing a Thanksgiving meal using mostly local ingredients, a trend inspired, in part, by Web sites like EatLocalChallenge.com.com
By the time an ingredient or trend shows up at the bake-off, it is usually about to make that fateful leap into the culture.
Everywhere you look, ambitious young chefs and entrepreneurs are adapting local ingredients to global trends, ranging from Southern barbecue to Japanese-Peruvian fusion.
And yes, expect plenty of these trends, ingredients, flavors and service styles to overlap.
It's also a uniquely Australian experience, because foreign recipes merge with local ingredients and food trends to create something new and special.
Topics ranged from the challenges of procuring organic ingredients, to overall trends and perceptions of consumers, to strategies for defending against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), to ways of overcoming the seemingly hardwired American preference for everything cheap.
