Food Forecast: City Edition

By: Jonathan Milder

During our time hunkered down in the Food Network Kitchens research labs formulating our 2011 FNK Forecast, we rounded up dozens of previews and predictions from all over the web, ranging from the thoroughly focused grouped and methodologically rigorous to the wildly guessed at and purely intuitive. Food trends, like food itself, are a subject nearly everyone has an opinion about. And round about the New Year, everyone, ourselves included, starts speaking up. Now that the year is beyond its New Year's hangover, what food trends are popping up in your neck of the woods?

While for our own purposes we wanted to keep our focus national and our trends fairly general, we took a particular interest in those prognosticators who worked a local angle and taught us something about the burgeoning culinary scenes in cities around the country. We enjoyed these so much, we thought we’d share them to give you an idea of what to expect for the rest of 2011.

In brief: Bicycle delivery, in-house butchering, beef, whole fruit desserts and a radical new restaurant concept from the great avant-garde chef Grant Achatz.

In sum: Modern Mexican, Japanese ingredients, small pies, comfort food on the wane, sustainable seafood on the rise.

Look for more: Small/focused/chef-driven restaurants, organic foods and gluten-free cooking.  The return of luxury dining will return, the persistence of comfort food.

Nordic cuisine, house-made candy bars, micro-distilleries, exotic meats and a backlash against brunch.

Hot Food Trends for 2011, SACRAMENTO Bee

To name a few: Breakfast pizza, ‘humane’ foods, food vacations, local sourcing and goat.

For starters: Marshmallows, sexy veggies, third wave coffee and artisanal bread.

Check out more food trend predictions over on our sister blog, Cooking Channel's Devour.

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