’Tis the season for a barrage of end-of-year roundups, so let us round them up for you. Over at The Wall Street Journal, Bruce Palling writes that 2011 has been the year “food critics speculated that fine dining would be eclipsed by fun dining,” which rings pretty true around here with the madness over places like Fatty ‘Cue, Roberta’s, M. Wells, and Torrisi/Parm; and with the closing of El Bulli, this year also may have represented “the high-water mark for Modernist Cuisine.”
Palling dubs the Noma-inspired hyperlocavore trend “the New Naturalism,” and it’s a trend the folks at the Huffington Post predict will continue. They also herald fast-casual Asian, French dips (sound familiar?), and “the fall of food trucks.” Which is funny, since Nation’s Restaurant News seems to have just discovered food trucks, naming these and pretty much every other thing you’re sick of (gluten-free dishes, fancy ice cream) as next year’s trends. So look for the fast-food joints to start serving those locally grown cheeseburgers soon.
Culinary Reflections [WSJ]
Food Trends 2012: What We’ll See In The Year Ahead [HuffPo]
Chefs predict top menu trends for 2012 [NRN]
Earlier: James Beard Foundation Predicts 2012 Food Trends
