Quite often food trends trickle down from the foodservice world to the grocery realm. Consider balsamic vinegar. In the 1980s when Cal-Ital restaurants become popular, this was a new and exotic ingredient that home cooks quickly started asking for at the grocery store. Today balsamic vinegar is a kitchen staple and sold in even well-stocked convenience stores. The modern equivalent is black garlic, which as 2009 dawned was brand new to most chefs but is now, less than 18 months later, available at chain grocers such as Longo’s and Metro.

As the black garlic example shows, restaurants are still an important progenitor of trends. However, today many current restaurant trends are consumer driven and spring from our societal concerns about health and wellness.

Portion Control
US chains such as TGI Friday’s have been successful with their ‘Right Portion, Right Price’ options and other restaurants such as California Pizza Kitchen hope to duplicate this success by launching ‘Small Cravings’ menu items that focus on bold flavours delivered small portions at small prices. Here in Canada, this trend is flourishing as well as restaurants such as Oliver-Bonacini offer small dessert offerings such as their ‘couple of squares.’

Calorie Counts
While Quick Serve Restaurants (QSR’s) have offered calorie and nutrient info about their menu items on line or in store for many years, sit down restaurants have long been exempt from this kind of disclosure. However, today more sit-down chains and higher end eateries are attempting to appeal to dieters by showcasing menus and menu items that are limited in calorie. For instance, at SIR corps Four, all menu items are under 650 calories and Jack Astor’s is promoting their 415 calorie chicken salad in ads on restroom doors in health club chains.

Satiety
Satiety is of growing interest among consumers who want to be fit and slim but don’t want to suffer with hunger pangs. At the foodservice level, restaurateurs are addressing this need by creating menu items that feature more whole grains. Ontario upscale pizzeria chain Il Fornello’s whole wheat pizza crust is one great example, while Starbuck’s oatmeal success is soon to be challenged by McDonald’s who has announced that they’ll be launching $1.99 cups of oatmeal on their new breakfast menu. Likewise, brown rice is offered at many more sushi restaurants than it was even a year ago.

Lower Sodium
While there aren’t a lot of restaurants or chains that are actively reducing salt levels in their menu items, you can be sure that chefs have a growing awareness of this issue and are asking their suppliers for lower sodium semi-prepared ingredient options. Likewise, restaurants that prepare items from scratch and use few processed items in their menu offering are being recognized and chosen by consumers as better choices than chains that use more manufactured ingredients.

In the near future look for more restaurants to substitute extra herbs, garlic, spices, citrus and other high flavour ingredients for bottled marinades, sauces and salty condiments such as mustard, ketchup and soy sauce.

Allergies
With food allergy awareness now elevated in schools and child-centered businesses, restaurants are beginning to realize that adult food allergy sufferers are an unfulfilled group. From gluten-free options on mainstream menus to exclusively allergy free venues there are more safe dining options for people with food allergies than every before. A prime example is Zero8, a Montreal restaurant, where the menu excludes the eight most common allergens (fish and seafood, peanuts, nuts, sesame seeds, milk, soybeans, eggs, wheat/gluten).

What other healthful living changes and concepts would you like to see on Canadian restaurant menus?

Jeff Crump, Executive Chef at Ancaster Old Mill and cookbook author

Jeff is a Canadian chef who has developed his talents at a number of the world’s top restaurants; including The Fat Duck, Lumiere, Araxi, AGO and Chez Panisse.  He is a graduate of UWO, the Stratford Chefs School and is a Canadian Slow Food pioneer. He is currently the Executive Chef at the  Ancaster Old Mill & Spencer’s at the Waterfront in Ontario.

What’s your weakness? Dessert or mains?
Ice Cream is my weakness…vanilla with caramel sauce

Who or what got you interested in food?
My father cooked at home, so I started cooking

What inspires you?
Cookbooks, what other people are doing.  And just looking at ingredients, what is in season gets the ideas flowing.

What was your favourite dinner when you were a kid? Do you like it now?
Manicotti stuffed with ground beef. Yes, I still love stuffed pasta.

What’s the first dish you remember making?
Mussels steamed in white wine and garlic.

Proudest food-related moment?
Fortunately I have so many… cooking at Chez Panisse, publishing a cookbook, seeing my young cooks grow into very skilled chefs.

Strangest food you’ve ever eaten?
Bulet (duck embryo, soft boiled still in egg) on a street corner in Thailand.

Favourite sound in the kitchen?
Silence, I like when I’m in the kitchen before everyone else.

Favourite cooking smell?
Onions, garlic cooking in olive oil.

Quintessential Canadian dish?
Butter tarts.

Molecular gastronomy, best thing ever or the unwearable haute couture of food?
When done well it is astounding.

Cilantro — can’t get enough or tastes like soap?
Love it!

What local foods can’t you live without?
Corn, apples.

What’s your greatest culinary extravagance?
Le Creuset pots & pans.

Most over-rated kitchen gadget?
Garlic press.

What’s the most treasured possession in your kitchen? Why?
My head chef, Bryan Gibson. He makes my life easy!

Fill in the blank. If I never cooked / ate / heard about  ________ again, I’d be happy.
Raisins or green peppers.

If you could cook for anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
My son, Kane.  He is young and I look forward to cooking for and with him.

What would you prepare for him/her?
We would make pizza.

What  was the last thing you ate?
Honestly, ice cream that was my  staff meal.

If you had to work outside the culinary field, what would you do?
Stock Broker?  Really I couldn’t imagine not cooking.

Beet soup -- the simple life

Stefan Zauner started his culinary journey by attending the Schloss Hofen Culinary Arts School in Lochau, Austria. Upon graduation he began his career working in world-class facilities in Austria, Switzerland, and Bermuda.

In 1989, after moving to Canada, Stefan began working at the award winning Post Hotel Relais & Chateaux in Lake Louise, Alberta.
The majority of the past decade Stefan has been working in Toronto’s finest hotels including the Sutton Place Hotel, The Westin Harbour Castle Hotel and Conference Center and The Delta Chelsea Hotel.

In the spring of 2006, Stefan moved to Saskatoon where he was the Executive Chef at the renowned Delta Bessborough Hotel and then later held the Executive Chef position at TCU Place Saskatoon’s Art and Convention Center . Stefan has joined the Manitoba Institute of Culinary Arts as the Corporate Chef in 2008.

What’s your weakness? Dessert or mains?
Desserts.

Who or what got you interested in food?
At and early age of 14, I was given the opportunity to work with a great Chef who has traveled the world.

What inspires you?
Every day there is a new creation in food in an industry that doesn’t stand still.

What was your favourite dinner when you were a kid? Do you like it now?
Kaese spaetzle. I’ll still make it for my kids today.

What’s the first dish you remember making?
It still doesn’t have a name.

Proudest food-related moment?
One night 8,500 people came, ate, enjoyed themselves. And it all went well…

Strangest food you’ve ever eaten?
Still think about…still wonder if I should have eaten huo zhu zi*.

Favourite sound in the kitchen?
Laughter.

Favourite cooking smell?
Roasted garlic.

Quintessential Canadian dish?
The apple pie.

Molecular gastronomy, best thing ever or the un wearable haute couture of food?
Let’s cook with what nature gave us and let the scientist battle this one out…

Cilantro — can’t get enough or tastes like soap?
Love it! Need it! Cant get enough!

What non-local foods can’t you live without?
The banana.

What’s your greatest culinary extravagance?
Our combi therm.

Most over-rated kitchen gadget?
The can opener. Hide that thing somewhere. Get rid of it.

What’s the most treasured possession in your kitchen? Why?
A turn of the century (1900), “Chef the Chef” High Carbon 13-inch chef knife made in le Creux de l’enfer, Thiers, France.

Fill in the blank. If I never cooked / ate / heard about __________ again, I’d be happy.
Foie gras.

If you could cook for anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Anyone.

What would you prepare for him/her?
Anything.

What was the last thing you ate?
Roasted beet soup (that one of our students made) and a ham sandwich. The simple life.

If you had to work outside the culinary field, what would you do?
Live and work on a farm.

Photo © foodista. Published under a Creative Commons License.

Nancy Hinton

Nancy Hinton, Chef de cuisine, works at Les Jardins Sauvages, a country restaurant specializing in wild edibles just outside Montreal, She works alongside her partner, François Brouillard, a long time forager by profession and lineage. Her business card also reads Consultant, but only to cover all the other culinary odds and ends she does on the side, such as writing, teaching, menus… She spends most of her time in the kitchen, especially during the growing season.

What’s your weakness? Dessert or mains?
Definitely savory, not sweet. But it is not the main dishes I have a weakness for as much as the sides, ie. vegetables and sauce. I’m a sauce girl. And a salad girl. And a cheese girl.

Who or what got you interested in food?
I always loved to eat, but it was working as a part time waitress while studying at McGill in Biochemistry that I spent a lot of time in restaurants with my nose always in the kitchen, at which point the wonderful world of food crept into my soul, slowly leading me astray.

What’s inspires you?
All that I have to work with: nature, the produce, the people, books. It is the engaging, multi-faceted nature of the job of cooking that feeds me– always so challenging and dynamic. I love that it is physical and hands on (blood, sweat and tears), yet creative and sensual, then drenched in history with so much science underlying it all. There is always so much to learn. Above all that, it is at the core simply about food, making things taste good, and making people happy.

What was your favourite dinner when you were a kid? Do you like it now?
Pizza, the only non home-cooked meal of the week. (My mom wasn’t the best cook, but bless her heart, she had ten screaming kids.) I did love her turkey though, especially the stuffing, and the turkey sandwiches and turkey soup that followed. I still love all of the above.

What’s the first dish you remember making?
Sautéed mushrooms with soy sauce and black pepper. I like to think I also put a touch of vinegar, but I think I may be imagining things.

Proudest food-related moment?
I can’t think of one. But if I didn’t feel proud at the end of most days, I wouldn’t be doing what I do.

Strangest food you’ve ever eaten?
Cured, fermented duck egg. Breadfruit.

Favourite sound in the kitchen?
The silence when I turn the fan hood off at the end of the night.

Favourite cooking smell?
Fresh coriander being chopped, or wild ginger.

Quintessential Canadian dish?
I could name a modern dish using the best local produce like you find on so many menus these days. But the low-brow shepherd’s pie (Paté chinois) comes to mind, because of a story someone told me about the origins of the French name. It came from the time of the building of the railway, when the cooks were Chinese, and this dish of potatoes, meat and corn was a staple for the workers who helped build this country’s backbone. It seems to have had staying power in the diets of many Canadians of different backgrounds, too.

Molecular gastronomy, best thing ever or the unwearable haute couture of food?
Some of it is ‘haute couture’, but a lot of it is positively just evolution, using new tools to do the same things but with better precision, or providing new ingredients and techniques for manipulation of texture and flavour. I’m sure that some of the tricks are here to stay, just as others will fade away. Regardless, I think all new approaches are valuable to stretch the mind and offer inspiration.

Cilantro — can’t get enough or tastes like soap?
Absolutely Love it. But not everywhere. And yes, it does taste like soap, but in a good way.

What non-local foods can’t you live without?
Lemons and olive oil. Coffee, but that’s not for cooking, but to keep me cooking.

What’s your greatest culinary extravagance?
Having my personal forager.

Most over-rated kitchen gadget?
I don’t have any useless gadgets like a garlic press, bagel slicer or Magic Bullet. There is no room for anything superfluous in my small kitchen.

What’s the most treasured possession in your kitchen? Why?
Besides my MAC knife, I would say my smiley face heat-proof spatula (because it makes me smile) and my microplane, because I use lemon zest and nutmeg so much.

Fill in the blank. If I never cooked / ate / heard about  ____ again, I’d be happy.
White pepper.

If you could cook for anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Leonard Cohen. It would be nice to offer him even the smallest comfort or pleasure, given how much his music has fed me over the years.

What would you prepare for him/her?
Anything he wanted. I think he is a vegetarian though, so I would go all out with the wild greens and mushrooms.

What  was the last thing you ate?
A cheese plate (Gré des Champs, Pizy, Terre Promise).

If you had to work outside the culinary field, what would you do?
Writing, journalism, photography.