Prime Movers
3 Flour Power
Closer to the mainstream sits ciabatta, an herbal,
yeasty, olive oil-tinged, flour-dusted Italian bread. It’s already
made its mark on Jack in the Box’s menu; the West Coast-based burger chain unleashed several new ciabatta-themed sandwiches during the past year.
Ciabatta and other specialty breads will be turning up more and more in months to come. Panera Bread is building a fast-casual sandwich empire based around fresh, novel,
and distinctive breads. That phenomenon has led more traditional
quick-serves to look past the plain, sugary bun of old to embrace more
upscale varieties. In the future, brioche, herb- and vegetable-flavored
breads, whole-grain offerings, and a wealth of other possibilities will
likely make their presence felt on a universal
level.
One of the wonderful things about high-quality bread is that it can transform even ordinary ingredients
into something sublime. Surround a basic burger with a fresh baguette, a
rosemary and Asiago cheese roll, or an onion-flecked bun, and suddenly
you’re holding a very different sandwich. Quick-serves are in a prime
position to devise better breads that can transform existing products into
entirely new and proprietary tastes. All they need is some imagination and
the ability to work with suppliers to cost-effectively carry out the new
specs. It’s a relatively low-risk/high reward proposition.
4 Regional Mexican
More and more Americans are coming to understand that the food they have tended to group under the general heading of “Mexican” is, in fact, a
composite of many different regional cuisines, including those of Oaxaca,
Yucatan, and Veracruz. Both chef Amey Shaw,
formerly of Berkeley’s Fourth Street Grill and now the proprietor of
Sonoma County’s L’Assiette, an organic artisan foods take-out
business, and Tom Worthington, who teaches
Mexican cooking at San Francisco’s Tante Marie Cooking School,
believe Yucatecan cuisine might be in the best position to take off quickly. The region’s popular signatures include recados, seasoning combinations that are rubbed into pork and chicken
before cooking, and achiote paste.
Of the various recados, Worthington notes that recado
negro is the most common. Made with charred chiles and allspice berries, the flavor is strong and bitter, he
says, and can be provocative and exciting. Achiote paste, meanwhile, figures prominently in the Yucatecan favorite cochinita
pibil, pork wrapped in banana leaves and roasted
in a pit.
“The thing about Yucatecan is that it’s
different, but still familiar,” Shaw says. “Americans
don’t perceive it as too weird.”
“Overall, we’re developing more adventurous
palates [with Mexican food],” Worthington adds. “We started
with macho flavors, but now we’re moving into more floral, more
sensory things. It’s a healthy trend.”
As consumers continue to search for new taste
sensations, they’re often surprised by the sorts of tempting flavors
that different Mexican regions offer. Yucatan cuisine includes handmade tortillas filled with squash blossoms and
pomegranate seeds on a stuffed pepper. And Oaxaca gave the world the seven moles—spicy sauces composed of a base
of onion, chiles, nuts or seeds, as well as unsweetened chocolate.
Many chefs agree that Americans’ perception of
Mexican food today is evolving quickly, much the way our understanding of
Italian food has grown over the course of the past 30 or 40 years. In 1970,
“Italian” referred to spaghetti and red sauce, pizza, and not
much else. These days, many Americans appreciate and celebrate the distinct
differences between Sicilian fare and Tuscan or Neapolitan cuisine. One day
in the not-too-distant future, we might witness a similar degree of
appreciation for the culinary heritage of our south of the border
neighbors.
5 White Tea
Now, here’s a trend whose applicability to a quick-service
environment might be limited for the moment,
but it’s one that’s nonetheless
cropping up with ever-greater frequency on our radar. White tea’s
subtle taste allows it to be flavored in any number of ways, and with a
higher concentration of antioxidants than either black or green teas and much less caffeine, it is rapidly making inroads
among health-conscious consumers. As it happens, white tea isn’t
actually white at all, but rather pale green; when brewed, it looks like
diluted apple juice and tastes slightly sweet, without the grassy undertones many people dislike about green tea.
Celestial Seasonings and the Republic of Tea already offer white tea among
their other offerings; we anticipate that it’s well on its way to
even wider acceptance.
6 Dulce de Leche
Finally, there is this Latin dessert favorite, which has achieved widespread
attention for its prevalence in major manufacturers’ ice creams and
its recent introduction into Hershey’s Kisses. As a sort of caramel spread whose name roughly translates to “milk jam,” dulce de leche is comforting
in its familiarity and rich taste, but it lacks
the butter that’s typically found in caramel candies. Dulce de leche is made with sweetened, condensed milk that’s tossed into a saucepan with sugar and boiled
until the whole concoction turns brown. And its dessert-related
applications are nearly endless: one can
imagine a dulce de leche milkshake, handheld
pie, or cookies in a quick-service setting, as well as a host of other options.
My hope is that at least
some of the foregoing trends spark a discussion or a handful of experiments in quick-serve test kitchens around the nation. There’s no real reason why quick-serves can’t spend more time on the vanguard of
up-and-coming culinary trends. Given their enviable product-development
resources and extraordinary number of distribution outlets, there’s
an argument to be made that fast-food and fast-casual chains are in the
best possible position to promote the trial of new, exciting flavors even
before those trends have traveled the traditional TrendMapping route from
white-tablecloth settings to gourmet magazines to casual restaurants to
mainstream family and women’s publications. Who’s to say that
consumers won’t one day experience the Next Big Thing at Burger King,
that Taco Bell won’t be a bellwether of
up-and-coming regional Mexican cuisines, or that Wendy’s can’t
be trendy? All it takes is a willingness to set
the pace and a few good ideas.
Marc Halperin is
QSR’s menu development
columnist and culinary director and partner at the Center for Culinary
development. Contact him at
marc@qsrmagazine.com.
