Appetites: 2 dining trends that will dominate the Twin Cities in 2018
The trends for the last few years have been all about ingredients that were supposed to be health-giving superfoods, like kale, quinoa or pomegranates. But what's coming in 2018?
Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, senior writer and restaurant critic of Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, tells MPR News host Tom Crann there will be two big trends in 2017.
• Automation: Lots of industries have been trying to replace costly humans with different strategies for no-humans, and that's gangbusters in restaurants right now.
Farm + Vine in Minnetonka — by the people behind the very successful Greenfield's restaurants — have figured out how to get rid of bartenders entirely, a human at the cash register takes your card and gives you a special wristband, and then you get as much wine as you want out of spigots on the wall like at a yogurt place.
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That'ss on top of the counter service explosion. Hot new restaurants like the coming Montreal Bagel spot are opening with no servers. The many others include Ramen Kazama, Pimiento Kitchen, The Naughty Greek, Grain + Green and Delicata Pizza. Moskowitz Grumdahl said it's the upcoming $15 an hour minimum wage that's doing this, but also desire for restaurant owners to offer health-insurance to their remaining employees."
• Biography and authenticity: Only a decade ago it seems like everyone felt like they had to open with a crowd-pleasing menu that assumed a pretty timid crowd: a Caesar salad on every menu; a pasta, a chicken breast, etc. Chefs are finding that diners are more interested in a rooted, authentic experience. Chef Christina Nguyen of northeast's new super hot-spot Hai Hai draws on her Vietnamese childhood; Jorge Guzman, who made national news leading Surly Brewer's Table, is planning a restaurant on his mother's family's Yucatan roots; Gerard Klass is opening a hotly anticipated new soul food restaurant called Soul Bowl.
The idea of "authenticity" has also shifted for the better, Moskowitz Grumdahl argues, from being authentic to somewhere else — authentic Vietnamese food is what they eat in some village outside Saigon — to biography. For example, authentic Vietnamese is Christina Nguyen's fusion of what she grew up with in her Vietnamese family, what she is interested in as a professional chef and what's available at the best local farms. So, she makes a beauty-heart-radish and banana blossom salad with a Vietnamese lime dressing that's authentic to 2018.
Use the audio player above to hear the whole segment.