Just as we predicted 12 months ago, we are ready to review the past year’s grand trends in the restaurant industry and preview what we think is to come in 2025.
Solo dining has become even more of a mainstay around the globe, healthy eating is kicking it as we learn that good nutrition is the key to beating illness, and the world has gone mocktail mad. On the other hand, we have not seen mushrooms and caviar alternatives take hold of their respective spaces.
At the end of a tumultuous year for the world, here are five food trends we are happy to say goodbye to in 2024 and five food trends we are ready to welcome in 2025.
Five trends we can bid farewell to in 2024
Noisy sound systems
If one of your senses, namely your hearing, is being blocked by obnoxiously loud or discordant music at a restaurant, your senses of taste and smell are also going to be hindered, disrupting the whole dining experience. Far too many restaurants cannot find this balance of good background music versus turning into a club.
Over-iced cocktails
Ice itself is a main component of cocktails, facilitating both the cooling and dilution of a drink to ensure that each sip is well balanced and served at the proper temperature. However, cocktails sometimes include a bit too much ice to ensure maximum profit is received, leaving bar-goers with watered-down tipples and not enough alcohol for a good time.
Abundant food portions
As diners become more aware of the impact that restaurant dining has on the climate crisis, the next targeted trend is to reverse the more-is-more food portioning found at many restaurants. Less truly is more when it comes to ensuring that diners are not unnecessarily stuffed at the end of a meal and that waste is kept to a minimum for a healthier planet.
Crazy social media food
The unregulated structure of TikTok, Instagram, Xiaohongshu, and other social media platforms has catalysed many a trend to sprout online, marketing dangerous and unhealthy-to-consume foodstuffs, such as pink sauce, butter boards, and dubious health supplements. These products and trends have found themselves being used and replicated at restaurants too.
Massive menus
À la restaurant chains and American-style diners, a menu the size of a short novel once was considered the gold standard in the restaurant industry. Today, diners need and prefer menus that are consolidated and precise, ensuring that ingredients are not left to waste or age when certain dishes are not being served that often. People like guidance on what they can and cannot eat at a restaurant.
Five trends we predict for 2025
Savoury-meets-sweet dishes
Hot honey, salted caramel, and chilli-dressed ice cream – 2025 is the year when sweet meets savoury for a contrasting flavour profile that adds a little spice to our meals. This flavour profile has existed in the past, but diners now are looking for ways to invigorate and colour their diets with a clashing of tones not previously familiar.
Fusion food
No country can effectively stake a claim on crafting a cuisine without external influences or impressions. As fusion food goes, this modern dining trend has not died down just yet and is continuing to entice people to try something exciting when the normal gets too normal. The year 2024 has seen Laos-American BBQ, Filipino-French, Italian-Japanese, and Spanish-Chinese restaurants light up around the world.
Back to basics
With fine-dining taking a backseat and fine-casual and quick-service restaurants dominating, people are saving the grandiose and expensive meals for special occasions and are instead favouring home comforts. Restaurants are now serving like a grandmother would: the ingredients are intelligible, the dishes are straightforward, the service is approachable, and the prices are affordable. This trend is bringing the home to the restaurant.
Vietnamese food explosion
Just as Korean, Cantonese, and Japanese cuisines have had their moments on the world stage, Vietnamese cuisine is headlining the nation’s global soft-power campaign. It began with pho, then banh mi, and now dozens of Vietnamese recipes are rocking diners’ palates, enabling Vietnamese chefs across the world to flex their use of fresh and fragrant and sour and spice.
Secret dinners
Leveraging the human desire to socialise and cohabitate, restaurants have jumped on the trend of hosting secret dinners to bring strangers together to enjoy a meal and bond over new connections. This formula works very well indeed, with food always a key meeting ground for building both friendships and more romantic relationships.
