Foodie trends for a new year
Casual cuisine and communal tables among the new rage.
Vancouver, at long last, has found its culinary groove. It’s a laid- back panache, embodied in the legions of bustling, casual ‘ it’ restaurants. In 2013, it’ll be more of this super- casual deliciousness with an inward spiral toward being more and more local.
The trend, triggered by an economic recession, has been lustily embraced by diners and it suits us like a body- hugging Lululemon. While higher- ends still struggle, thrift, as long as it’s scrumptious, thrives at places like Meat and Bread ( luscious carnivorous sandwiches), The Union ( South East Asian rice bowls, banh mi), Sardine Can and Espana ( Spanish tapas), Nicli Antica Pizzeria and Via Tevere ( ridiculously good pizzas), Campagnolo and Wildebeest ( haute chefs take to casual food) and Bao Bei ( funky modern Chinese).
And at many of these joints, there are big communal tables, daring us to shrink our personal space and thaw around strangers. I haven’t noted too much social interchange across parties at these tables yet, but it sounds like a capital idea to me.
Of course, we’re all loving the truly down- market food on the streets, once a mewling mix of hotdogs and hot chestnuts, and now a barking burst of variety. Street vendors with moxie take their street cred and open brick- and- mortar versions. Nu Souvlaki has three hole- in- the- wall versions and has all but abandoned the street cart; Tacofino opened a clamorously funky place in East Vancouver ( but good luck finding a seat).
Re- Up BBQ opened a sit- down at River Market in New West and the bacon- centric Pig on The Street is in the midst of working out a permanent location for Pig and Mortar Craft Pub and Grub, soon- to- be their bricksandmortar restaurant.
In Vancouver, the street food season is as short as the sunny season, thus a parallel hole- in- the- wall operation picks up the slack. “We already pay for a commissary kitchen, it only makes sense,” says Krissy Seymour, one of the owners of Pig on the Street. At their restaurant, they’ll add craft beers ( right on trend!) and more menu items to their popular bacon dishes, she says. And still on trend, they procure as much as they can locally, including the bacon.
“I’ve always wanted to run something like this with a beer scene. My parents say I’ve been interested ever since I was a kid,” says Seymour.
The street food scene will embed ever more deeply into the city culture. Wagon trains of vendors will show up at events, hold mini street- food festivals and it’s only getting going. This year, Dine Out Vancouver Festival ( Jan. 18 to Feb. 3) jumped at the chance to add a mo’ better street food component to the annual event. Last year, the small representation was such a smash hit, organizers went bigger and longer.
As for current “it” foods, cured meats and all things pork, from head to tail, are still going strong. In fact, home cooks have moved on to curing meats and making sausages themselves. ( If you’re such a cook, Save On Meats offers how- to courses on sausage and charcuterie.)
Speaking of pork, bacon’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Imaginations are still running wild with baconated foods. And oysters! B. C. farmers are producing amazing oysters up and down the West Coast and this is the year we fall madly, insatiably in love with raw oysters. Emad Yacoub, of the successful Glowbal Group of restaurants, saw this and turned his swish Sanafir restaurant into The Fish Shack with oysters as the main attraction and hired all- knowing oyster zealots as shuckers. If you haven’t got an oyster shucker among your kitchen tools, it’s now a must- have.
We’ve developed a hankering for a hitherto ignoble vegetable — kale. Not only is it high in vitamins, especially Vitamin A, it has fibre and bulk, making you feel full quickly, a dieter’s dream food, it’s been called. And if you haven’t yet snacked on kale chips, you ought to. For that matter, all kinds of vegetables and fruits are being transformed into baked chips — beets, yam, carrots, taro. Could they be the new post- Hostess Twinkie snack food?
With Burma rising and travellers flocking the country, we’ll be hankering for the lively, healthy food from this country. Author Naomi Duguid, in her beauty of a cookbook, Burma: Rivers of Flavour, recently gave us the perfect introduction.
The vegetarian/ vegan/ glutenfree void is finally being taken seriously. Like seriously! Recently, three new- breed, chic vegetarians opened, offering lovely plating and delicious options of all of the above. Perhaps regular restaurants will finally get with it and put more thought into their one vegetarian offering on the menu?
Gluten- free foods are going mainstream with pre- mixed gluten- free flours and products will soon be available in neighbourhood stores.
Food trends are often introduced by chefs and there’ve been rumours of the demise of molecular gastronomy — too elite, too fraught, too badly done. Well, I don’t think so. It’s now sneaking into the home. That is, with an assist from cookbooks and do- ityourself kits like the ones from MoleculeR ( www. molecule- r. com), a Montreal company. Their kits provide tools and ingredients for gelification, spherification, emulsification, foaming and whipping up high- concept dishes. They also sell a kit for home mixologists. And Richmond’s Wild Sweets ( dcduby. com) sells ingredients for modernist cookery online and will have how- to videos online soon.
Food continues to colonize the Internet, especially as the millennium generation appears to have taken up permanent residence there. Vancouver’s Saul Good ( itsaulgood. com), for example, took local and sustainable online, selling B. C. and even 100- mile gourmet baskets. FoodiePages. ca offers allCanadian artisan products, including Monkey Butter products from Vancouver ( maple bacon peanut butter, salted caramel peanut butter, dark chocolate cherry peanut butter) and Vancouver Island Salt Co.’ s hand- harvested sea salt ( heretofore the missing ingredient for the total 100- mile locavore).
It’s not news that urban gardens are taking over vacant lots, rooftops and backyards. But now, gardening’s moving right into your kitchen. Vancouver’s Urban Cultivator is just about to set up a storefront in Kitsilano and although the target market is new condos, they’re selling these dishwashersized hydroponic units to individuals as well. Founder Tarren Wolfe is in talks with a major local developer to install them in every unit for a project as well as with several Toronto developers. ( A Mongolian developer had them installed in two condo developments after seeing Wolfe on Dragon’s Den, pitching the product.)
“It’s a feature that can help sell the units,” he says. “They’re all over Europe and Asia.”
They sell for $ 2,200 but you can grow four to eight pounds of microgreens in a week. “You can make your money back in one to three years, depending on how much you grow,” he says. When asked, he said, the system is “not the greatest” for growing nonfood plants, if you catch my drift.
OK, maybe you’d have to eat a lot of bushels of micro- kale and arugula to amortize that cost but it comes from a good place and that place, fuels much of Vancouver food trends — growing, buying, cooking and eating local, sustainable, healthy, delicious food.