Top food trends for 2018

Every year the UK fixates on a few particular international cuisines and sees a slew of upmarket, authentic restaurants specialising in the food of a particular country. In recent years we’ve done Korea, Peru and Mexico – so what will 2018 bring? Portuguese is certainly being given the attention it deserves, but even more exciting is the rise of African – specifically West African – cuisine. For the world’s second largest continent, Africa has never been thrust into the culinary spotlight like it’s about to be, thanks to people like Zoe Adjonyoh of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen and the team at Ikoyi; a ground-breaking restaurant that’s bringing West African flavours into the fine dining sphere. Expect suya (West African barbecue), millet, okra and plantain to become much more popular in the coming months.

Last year veganism seemed to finally leap from the niche to the mainstream, and with it came a new outlook on cooking vegetables. 2018 will see this movement continue to grow, with more high-end restaurants offering full vegan tasting menus, TV chefs showing the public how to give vegetables the attention they deserve and countless new vegan-friendly products in the shops. On top of all this, we’re also looking at waste when it comes to fruit and veg, with chefs adopting a ‘root to stem’ ethos that means things like cauliflower stalks, sprout tops and potato peelings are saved from the bin and turned into delicious, environmentally-aware dishes. Keep an eye out for lacto-fermentation, too – we think it's going to be as popular as pickling next year, thanks to the incredible flavour it brings to vegetables.

There’s a wave of young chefs currently shaking up the traditional restaurant scene in the UK, and we couldn’t be more excited. It started with Michelin-starred cooks ditching the tablecloths and reinventing their restaurants as more casual establishments, but the young guns of the food world are going one step further, cutting their teeth in the country’s top restaurants before setting out on their own. These new restaurants combine expert technique with relaxed, social surroundings – often at a lower price than their starred counterparts. It’s clear the chefs in charge are cooking the food they love, be that a style of food they picked up on their travels (see Ben Chapman of Kiln and Smoking Goat or the guys at Breddos Tacos) or focusing on a particular food and making it great (Max Halley of Max’s Sandwich Shop has turned the humble sandwich into a thing of true beauty).

It seems one restaurant just doesn’t cut it anymore, as more and more of the UK’s most popular chefs are creating their own mini restaurant empires off the success of their flagship establishments. The fantastic Andrew Wong is opening a more casual offshoot in the new year; Francesco Mazzei opened both Radici and Fiume in 2017 and the Galvin brothers have an incredible ten restaurants under their command. Next year, it’ll be easier than ever to get a table at your favourite places to eat.

The pre-dinner drink has become something much more than a simple glass of wine, a non-descript G&T or an unpleasantly sweet cocktail. When dining out we now have a whole menu of drinks meticulously developed by specialist bartenders to peruse. If you still want a classic gin and tonic then you have hundreds of gins, dozens of tonics and countless garnishes to mix and match, but in the world of cocktails mixologists have started to think like chefs in terms of their flavour combinations and ingredients. Next year we’ll see more homemade syrups, smoked spirits, whiskies washed in beef fat and beeswax-infused Manhattans behind the bar; your average tipple is about to get a lot more complex. There’s good news for non-drinkers too – as we become more health-conscious, bars are beginning to look at their non-alcoholic offering as well, utilising trendy drinks like kombucha to create delicious libations without the hangover.