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01/07/2007 Archived Entry: "Food Trend Report, 2007"

Michael Whiteman is one of the most accomplished men in the hospitality industry. Among his many credits, he is the only person ever to have opened five restaurants that earned three stars from the New York Times.

We’ve been friends for more than 20 years, but in one of those silly small world stories, we met long ago and didn’t even know it. I was a college student and had won a summer internship from the Magazine Publisher’s Association. Michael, still in his 20s, was the very young founding editor of Nation’s Restaurant News, and a mentor in the internship program, the MPA’s first. However, neither of us knew that we had met early in life until I sold my house in Connecticut and was going through all the stuff stashed in the attic and closets. At the bottom of a carton full of personal memorabilia, I found the program from the opening reception of the internship program, which listed Michael’s name, and a photo of the reception line. If only to shake his hand, we figured we must have met.

Nation’s Restaurant News was to become, and still is, the most important publication in the so-called hospitality industry. Michael eventually moved on and became the partner of Joe Baum, the legendary restaurateur. Together, as the Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co., they opened the original Windows on the World in the World Trade Center in 1976, not to mention all the other eating facilities in the World Trade Center – for instance The Big Kitchen and The Market Bar & Dining Room, which was one of those three-star restaurants. Then, after Hilton International ran it for a few years, they re-vamped and re-opened Windows on the World in 1996. Michael was the operator of Windows on September 11 2001. I was actually on the phone with him as the tower began to fall. The Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co. also refurbished and reopened The Rainbow Room (and all its ancillary Rainbows) at the top of 30 Rockefeller Center.

The first big event at Rainbow, on Dec. 20, 1987, just before its public opening, was the wedding of Michael Whiteman to Rozanne Gold, whom I am sure you all know, is one of my dearest friends – like my sister. In addition to being seriously close friends, Michael and Rozanne are seriously close neighbors. They live only two blocks away.

Michael consults on all kinds of jobs, all over the world. He creates high-profile restaurants for hotels, restaurant companies, major museums, and other consumer destinations. He is also considered one of the most prescient men in the business, meaning he predicts trends and fashions in eating, drinking, and hospitality. Every year he publishes a list of the Top 10 trends. Following is this year’s Michael Whiteman Trend Report, which is read by all the top people in the industry.

By the way, the five three-star restaurants he created are: Cellar in the Sky (in the original Windows), Rainbow Room, Aurora (a French restaurant), Market Bar & Dining Room (on the “concourse level” of the World Trade Center), and the Hudson River Club, where Rozanne, as director of menu development for the company (a job she landed, by the way, before she even knew Michael) created one of the first menus based solely on local food products. That’s a trend they started and that still continues.

To find out more about Michael Whiteman and his work, or to contact him, go to www.baumwhiteman.com.

#1 -- HEALTH AND WELLNESS TOP THE MENU
As baby boomers accept their collective aging, dietary issues gain momentum not just for themselves but for their children. Look for:

Rain forest “superfruits” and their extracts – açaí, cupuaçu, goji berries, coffee berry extracts, guava, guyabana, guarana, mangosteen, among others – that are loaded with antioxidants. These will appear in shakes, smoothies, ice creams and other desserts.

Fruit- and vegetable-crammed chips will grab market share from typical fatty-salty potato chips as manufacturers try sidestepping attacks on their obesity-causing mass market snacks. You’ll find these on platters next to your upscale hamburgers, too.

Better-for-you ice creams spiked with immune-boosting green tea, extra vitamins and minerals.

Next-generation yogurts enhanced with fiber and protein that fool you into feeling full; and yogurts that claim to improve your complexion.

Sodas with green tea, ginger and caffeine that theoretically make you lose weight, and vitamin-enhanced beers.

Even Disney is cutting the fat and calories of munch-food in its theme parks (and cutting portions, as well).

Wal-Mart’s muscling into organic food will force mass-market restaurant chains to follow.

Increasingly extravagant health claims on food packages.

#2 -- THE NEXT CUISINE
Most pundits point to India . But we say that Indian food is too complicated for home cooks and too obscure for most restaurant goers. So our vote goes to Peru. Why? Its government is promoting the cuisine, which is a fabulous fusion of Italian, Japanese, Indian, Spanish and indigenous cookery; it is part of the next wave of specific regional cookery; Nobu came from there; its hot, spicy, creative flavors resonate with Americans; it has a growing cadre of “new cuisine” chefs, some coming to the US, who are updating old fashioned dishes. Most importantly: There are big enough clusters of Peruvian immigrants to make their restaurants and ingredients more visible. You can now buy frozen guinea pig, an Andean delicacy, in Houston, and Inka Cola is sold on aptly named Amazon.com.

#3 -- CHOCOLATE – HEALTH AND EXOTICA
America’s going nuts for chocolate. Manufacturers are touting health benefits of the cacao bean (not mentioning the calories) -- from lowering blood pressure to elevating your mood to pumping you full of anti-oxidants (Google ‘chocolate and health’ and you get more than seven million citations!). Luxury chocolates seasoned with oddities like paprika, saffron, curry power, wasabi and even cheese are enlivening menus and retail shops. Bitter, rich drinking chocolates are the rage among people who years ago abandoned those packages of powdered cocoa. Look for restaurants to add shots of scotch, brandy or liqueurs to hot chocolate; for upscale food shops to feature high-priced nibs and chunks for easy melting; and for supermarkets to double their baking-chocolate selections as brands like Hershey's, Nestlé, Ghirardelli’s, Scharffen Berger increase the cacao content of baking bars and trumpet their contents on the label. Next: Chocolate sommeliers.

#4 – SENSORY DECEPTION
Last year’s chef’s labored to bring out the pure flavors of top-notch ingredients. Next year’s chefs are dismantling the molecular structure of these same ingredients --whirling them in laboratory equipment with frightening sounding chemicals, dipping them in liquid nitrogen, inflating them with vacuum cleaners, fabricating cantaloupe caviar, deep-frying mayonnaise, turning sauces into powders, and spraying the air with flavors to suggest that what you’re looking at isn’t what you’re about to eat. It is equivalent to a gastronomic IQ test in which typical diners are all below average. Next time you eat a chocolate bonbon for dessert and find that it’s a blob of olive oil, you’ll know you’ve been ambushed by a Molecular Gastronomer.

#5 – BELLIES ARE BIG
Relentlessly searching for new things to serve, chefs are focusing on the nether regions of fish and animals. Pork belly, commonly called bacon, landed on menus all over the country last year, and savvy sushi chefs have long offered costly tuna belly, known as toro, to customers craving its prized fattiness. Next year menus will feature veal, salmon, swordfish and lamb bellies – all rich with fatty flavor, all (not coincidentally) cheap cuts that used to be trimmed away. They’ll generally be braised, and sometimes braised and grilled. This definitely is restaurant food, so don’t look for this stuff in your supermarket.

#6 – ETHICAL EATING
“Fair trade” and “sustainable” are terms gaining traction with restaurant chefs and American consumers. People aspire to feel ethically comfortable about the food they buy: they want uncaged chickens and their eggs, humanely raised and slaughtered pork and beef, and environmentally friendly packaging. They’re looking for locally grown products that reduce the global warming impact of moving food around the world. They don’t want fisheries depleted for the sake of tuna steak on their plates. “Food miles” has entered the mainstream vocabulary. Starbucks’ battle with Ethiopian coffee farmers has raised consumers’ consciousness. There’ll be more fair trade coffee and chocolate, more compassionately raised meats, more organic chickens and vegetables listed on menus and sold in food shops than probably exist in the world.

#7 – THE IZAKAYAS ARE COMING
Move over tapas – make room for Japanese small plates. Venturesome restaurateurs are opening Japanese taverns, called izakaya, all over the world. These are homey places emphasizing modestly priced Japanese hors d’oeuvres washed down with oversized bottles of beer and overfilled glasses of sake. Some of the food may be unfamiliar but people are willing to risk $5 or $6 to experiment. You’ll find izakayas in London, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, LA (where, predictably, they’ve morphed into fusion menus), Omaha, Coral Gables and New York. The mavens behind P. F. Chang have opened a more Americanized version in Scottsdale, hoping to launch another chain.

#8 – CHEF DRIVEN STEAKHOUSES
Celebrity chefs are hanging their names on reinvented steakhouses. Wolfgang Puck, Bradley Ogden, Michael Mina, David Burke, among others, have launched newfangled beeferies that marry elements of serious cooking with simple but upscale grilling. More chefs are following this exercise in “brand extension.” When you get “sautéed snapper with edamame dumplings in a ragout of mussels” in a steakhouse, you know that the category is being redefined. Behind it: Hotels, casinos and shopping centers laying big money on these chefs because they’re competitively desperate to draw crowds.

#9 – BURGERS WITH PEDIGREES
Rachel Ray is planning a hamburger restaurant. Laurent Tourandel has launched BLTBurger. Joe Bastianich, partner of Mario Batali, plans one serving sustainable beef. And several other famous chefs are toying with the notion. Perhaps they’re inspired by Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar in Las Vegas where, in addition to a standard hamburger, you blow your winnings on a $60 Rossini Burger of Kobe beef, foie gras and truffles. Also watch for more Kobe or wagyu burgers (and hot dogs) than there are Kobe or wagyu cattle.

#10 – SALT
Cardiologists aside, people are rediscovering what salt is all about. Not the powdery stuff in round cardboard boxes; we’re talking instead about crunchy, flakey, tinted crystals from out-of-the-way places that have migrated from restaurant kitchens to dinner tables at home. Pink salt mined in the Peruvian Andes, black lava salt from Cyprus, ruddy Alaea salt from Hawaii, gray sea salt, smoked salts (a big seller at Dean & Deluca), herb-flavored salts, Tahitian vanilla sea salt, even truffle-flavored salt. More restaurants will identify these on their menus – and upcharge accordingly. Salted caramel has become the rage among upscale pastry chefs.

BUZZWORDS
Marcona almonds, sweet potato vinegar, aji peppers, potatoes bravas, flavored salts, party-colored beets and other baby root vegetables, house-cured meats and fish, fresh curd cheese, slow-poached eggs, Spanish hams and sausages, humanely raised cattle, American caviar, pastel hued cauliflower, molecular gastronomy, yuzu, bahn mi Vietnamese sandwiches, gnudi, savory ice creams, wildly decorative cupcakes, slow cooking at home, matcha green tea powder.