What is happening in 2025 in the fantastic world of gastronomy?
2025 predictions in restaurant gastronomy and beyond: Pan-Asian fusion, Ozempic, plant-based and natural wines
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What do the experts say
According to Michelin, in 2025, the trends in 2025 will be:
An increase in plant-based cuisine: we can agree,
Unusual topping and ingredients - perhaps a backlash against truffle and caviar everywhere.
Flame cooking flavours: they claim it is on the rise, I think it is a trend in decline, as it is a hype that has been hyped already and flame-only cuisine gets boring - due to its limitations. Everyone tries to be Asador Extebarri, but even eating grilled things every day would lose its appeal due to the simplicity of the flavours. I have a sneaky suspicion we are reaching the peak caveman era in terms of firewood cooking.
A fresh take on Southeast Asian cuisine, the renaissance of China cuisine, and tacos everywhere: I agree with the first two, I think tacos everywhere is a tendency for “poor people”, as it has made its time in high-end cuisine and, despite all the investment of Central and South American gastronomy actors, the rest of the world is quite cold towards this cuisine, which I think in Europe it hyped in the 90s with Gen X and did not manage to capture Gen Z.
Drink pairings beyond wine: the restaurant scene, against its will, has to open up to non-alcoholic alternatives as the new generations come in as customers and do not have the slightest interest in Parker, its wines, and so on.
According to me, they have found many key trends but not all trends.
So I made my own list for you.
What do I say
If the past ten years can be clearly defined as the Foodism Era, we all feel the subtle switch that has been ongoing ever since the Ozempic crowd silently started spreading from celebrities to the stay-at-home mama next door.
Lululemon (not just the brand, but the connected imaginary) went briefly out of fashion, but under a new name is back in style - and once again, creating aspirational value about being thin, white-ish, abundant in time to devote to cherishing one’s true call, and creating a network of similar individuals.
Clean eating is back in style and now is not anymore a left-wing, dreadlocks and yoga retreat in Bali thing for alternative people.
Clean eating now is moving towards the political right: eating clean is expensive, and eating clean is for affluent people who can afford themselves the luxury of purchasing organic, natural, fair-trade food. They are all above those impoverished slaves picking tomatoes in almost slavery conditions: clean eating is based on organic food provided by smiling providers, formerly marketing managers turned farmers after buying some land in a natural-looking place, with an important social media presence.
In contrast with clean eating, there has always been Food Porn - only that nowadays this has become something for rednecks. Immortalized by the early era of Instagram, it is nowadays something the “lower class” likes, and the higher classes look upon it with a smirk of disgust. The Supersize Me types, once media darlings are being cancelled into extinction.
Gooey food laced in grease and sauces is still all the rage for a certain kind of people, but an increasingly shrinking population. From the humungous burger, for instance, we are moving towards the smash one, more subdued, smaller, and not dripping in sauces.
All-you-can-eat buffet reeks of poverty and even five-star hotels are more and more inclined to swap the luxurious buffet spreads for an à la carte, a tailored offer, akin to any other meal.
Eating conspicuous meats (chuletón, wagyu, T-bones), once the raison d’étre of right-wing muscular and bulky manly men, is having a setback. First, when the carnivore crowd started including more and more women, this made most of their interiorised incel beliefs shake, then, it is now confusing.
At the same time, all things Asians are having a strong revival: not anymore looked upon line “ethnic” eating, but instead butchered into “pan-asian”, “fusion”, “nikkei”, and whatever combination of Westernized taste with asian-sounding and asian-looking food. A new wave of fusion opens up, one that indiscriminately picks and chooses to appeal to a society that is increasingly uprooted, increasingly lost, increasingly detached from both their cultural gastronomic markers and ignorant and indifferent for the newly imported ones - all is good as long as it tastes good. At the same time, authentic ethnic eating is relegated to Uber drivers and poor immigrants, without that gilded patina of exoticism needed to break into the Michelin restaurant scene, unless it abdicates from its purpose as cultural representation and accepts becoming what Italian cuisine became when migrating to the US, for instance.
I have a hunch - that hedonism is slowly dying with the ageing of its exponents (usually white, affluent men and their peers, men and women). There is a new hedonism coming up, similar to the Nineties, where the ambience and the mood of a restaurant, combined with the “right kind of clients” are far more important than the actual food.
In the wine department, all Parkeresque big, oaky reds and voluptuous ageing white wines are out of fashion and instead, a new wave of natural wines with various degrees of funkiness, which, for me, are the precursors of kombucha and other fermented drinks, is all the rage. More and more, people are foregoing alcohol altogether, and when not, their wine choice will be something like a kombucha anyway.
After having wholly butchered the service and, safe for a handful of three-Michelin-star restaurants, proposing an “easygoing” service even in one-Michelin-star ones, I see that this tendency of having cooks serve tables and open kitchens will continue strong. Cutting costs with the illusion of proximity, an allure of Japanese by proposing a bar-set seating setting only, and the illusion of warmth by having cooks swerve food across the bar.
Palates are getting less prone to weird textures and bitter flavour, but are well trained to recognize crunchiness and softness as an epitome of pleasure. Sparkling textures, gooey and crunchy, as long as they are recurrent and carefully mixed into plates that are based on sweet, salty and a dash of spicyness to perform a function of “being spiced”, thus exotic, but mildly so - not exotic like the family of an Uber driver, exotic like a Spanish cook opening a fusion restaurant in Dubai (you know who I mean).
Dashi will continue being in auge, in a sort of elitist orientalism that has no meaning nor reason to be, other than to pump the ego of the chef. In this same vein, we started witnessing a surging of ill-fated and badly done Chawanmushi in a sort of culinary syncretism that tries to hide under an oriental rug the lack of inventiveness, and that smells slightly of white men's colonisation.
Same for beurre blanc: if until a couple of years ago it was an impossible find, now it is, like a pest, everywhere. Gone is the roux and brown sauce. In tune with the white minimalism still in auge everywhere, especially in daylight restaurants geared towards an international, bland crowd of Gen Z new mamas and Pilates ex-pats, white sauces are all the rage.
Carpaccioland is that territory nobody claims, where slices of fish, meat or vegetables are thinly sliced, graciously arranged, and delightfully topped to be served to a crowd who is mindful of their eating, and even more so, mindful of the social media image they are projecting. Its more sophisticated fish version is vaguely reminiscing a Usuzukiri, but chefs are still too ashamed to call it that way.
A neighbour to the land of carpaccio is the land of tartare, in any kind of sublimation: be it meat, vegetables or fish, it will still be the lion’s share of entrées, for its intrinsic image of cleanness and healthiness ingrained in this shallow public of forced eaters, who would still rather take a picture of food than to eat it.
There is, last but not least, a steep increase in people who are abdicating meat and animal product consumption and are becoming a stronger voice that sooner or later the restaurant scene will have to take into account if they want to monetize these people as revenue.
At the same time, people are struggling with the new reality that it is because of UPF (ultra-processed food), fueled by food deserts in city centres and rural areas deprived of local shops, that they are getting sick and cannot lose weight, no matter how many calories they count or how many hours they go to the gym.
The biggest question for me in 2025 is: how will the GLP-1 medication shape gastronomy - because GLP-1 people are not eating clean or UPF free: those among them who are taking the medication for a quick slimming, are doing so to keep on eating as they were - even if they sometimes face discomfort and they are content with just one piece of fries instead of a bucket.
And you, what other trend are you recognizing?
What others are saying
says in their blog:in their blog says:You heard it hear first: a little sneak preview:
The grain: fonio, from West African grain;
Black limes, a key ingredient in Middle Eastern and North African cooking made bly blanching limes in salt and then drying until shriveled, brittle and black with a concentrated flavour that is brilliant in stews and soup;
The spice: hawaij, a Yemeni spice mix including ginger, cardamom, turmeric, black pepper, clovers fenugreek, cinnamon and nutmeg which gives a warm, earthy flavour
The quick fix: Filipino pancit stir-fried egg noodles
The snack: cucumber dill pickles: diy with equal parts white wine vinegar, caster sugar, a large pinch of salt, half a shallot finely diced and cucumber sliced on a mandolin or buy Kuhnes.
Dessert: exotic choux buns such as pistachio, rose and red plum choux served at Wildflowers Restaurant
in their blog say:My biggest takeaway is how dated some of these ideas already feel, the heat factor of each trend already beginning to cool once it reaches the level of corporate notice - like hot honey, which you can get at the airport, for crying out loud. Also widespread are categories so vast they begin to lose their meaning as “trends” - like the idea of Southeast Asian cuisine as a trend, which crops up multiple times.
in their blog claims that “saving your veggie scraps to make stock!” will be all the rage: says that:I’ve always loved Asian cuisine, and this year I’m diving deeper into recipes featuring ingredients like rice paper, gochujang, and miso. You’ll see me making crispy rice paper snacks, fusion tacos with Korean sauces, and flavourful Thai inspired dishes. Get ready for bold, umami-packed meals that are easy to recreate at home.
talks about 2024, but I think synthetic, plant and fungi proteins will be on the rise throughout 2025:Titled “Micro-trends are dead. Long live the vibe”, it posited that 2025 will not be dominated by trends, but by ‘vibes’. As Amy Francombe reports, a vibe is an ethos or cultural mood that extends far beyond a certain outfit or look.It’s not just a look, but a feeling or a mood.
This is fucking brilliant! The best post you have ever published since I know you? I say, yes!
This is very good. I was reading this to prepare a conversation I’m having tomorrow (https://jornaleconomico.sapo.pt/noticias/conheca-o-programa-completo-do-chefs-sustentabilidade-e-economia/) and found it really good!(different from agreeing with everything). Congratulations