Flavor shock as a future food trend

In the food world, it seems that the trend now seems to be setting an endless set of trends whenever possible. When New Year comes it is almost obligatory to announce food trends of the coming year. Now that the summer season is starting, food magazines are featuring tastes of summer, of course with the regular summer cliché trend of rosé wine. Recently, I had the chance to meet with Star Chen, CEO of Unilever Food Solutions to talk about their UFS Future Menus Report 2024 which delves into the world of food trends, scrutinizing global inclinations of chefs round the globe. I was curious about how an industrial food giant such us UFS was following the trend, as well as acting as an actual trendsetter for the future of food.

Delivering more with less is the biggest challenge for chefs today. Customers and guests in restaurants are more demanding than ever for memorable dining experiences — in quests for delicious food and drinks and searching for a total-package experience in the hospitality sector. However, with rising ingredient prices, a shrinking workforce and the ever-increasing cost of staying in business, it’s getting harder to meet these demands. Therefore, offering high-end dishes that center on the creativity of the chefs needs to be done in a whole new way. While keeping up with menu trends remains important, it proves to be hard in doing so, especially in the digital age, where trends appear and disappear with the speed of light on social media. Chefs and home-cooks alike are constantly trying to keep up with pace, and it is no secret that we do not have the ample time to make everything from scratch, such as a perfect demi-glace or béarnaise sauce, in our hectic times. The shrinking workforce is also a problem in professional kitchens, the good old times when apprentices had endless trials on perfecting in making a particular classic sauce, or toiling to vigorously whip egg yolks for a sublime mayonnaise by hand are now like scenes from an old movie. Nostalgic, but mostly a thing of a past in practice! That also causes a lack of experience in apprentice cooks, now in the digital era, the young generation is restless with time ticking, they want to become celebrity chefs the moment they graduate from a chef’s school, or even a mere cooking course.

With the changing times, and the time itself becoming the biggest issue now, guessing where the food world goes needs to be investigated. That’s where the UFS Menus of the Future 2024 Trend Report comes in. Based on the previous 2023 report and updated, the report is compiled by hours of in-depth research by experts in the foodservice industry, combined with input from at least 1,600 chefs from 21 countries around the world. The aim was to identify the most prominent menu trends, concluding to select eight topics which came as the most prominent. The Turkish version was recently launched, narrowing the trends down to five, including the ones most adjustable to the Turkish kitchen, namely, 1. feel-good foods, 2. irresistible vegetables, 3. low-waste menus, 4. flavor shock and 5. modernized comfort food.

The latter has particularly captivated my interest, as I have written a 2-page essay on the topic for the Turkish version. By the way, one reason that the list was downsized to five from eight was in Turkish culture, some topics tend to unite naturally, such as flavor contrast trend goes under the flavor shock title naturally, and when it comes to comfort food, no comfort food in Türkiye can be enjoyed alone, it is more about conviviality and togetherness, and the sharing food item goes into the comfort food caption effortlessly. Traditional food is an important heritage that reflects the spirit of cultures and societies. Every culture has its own traditional dishes which are passed down from generation to generation. They build bridges between the past and the future and give people peace of mind. Home-cooked meals cooked by our mothers in our childhood, the smell of which is longed for and the taste of which is unforgettable, holding a very special place in our memories. Such meals soothe our souls, make us feel safe with their familiar flavors and in a sense, become our safe harbors to take refuge in difficult times. Even if we enjoy a cup of “tarhana” soup in a mug in front of our screen in the office, that distinctive aroma of “tarhana” makes us feel at home, with family, not alone, etc. No wonder it is the best-selling instant soup of companies in Türkiye. It is all about making you feel you belong to a place, to your identity.

When talking to Star Chen, I was delighted to see that it was not about all business, he was truly concerned with issues I had in mind, such as the pressing of time, lack of apprenticeship and no-time for making everything from scratch and perfect at all times in professional kitchens. It is obvious that we do not mill our flour anymore, or we use electrical appliances and make use of premium technology in our kitchens, so why insist on trying to make a chicken broth starting by chasing a chicken back in the backyard. And there is always the concern of hygiene and also sustainability in professional kitchens. While the question of additives and chemicals in industrial food remain a concern of many, science is there in service of the food sector. I reminded Star Chen of the much-discussed article of my friend/colleague Rachel Laudan, “A Plea for Culinary Modernism” which argued that the obsession with eating natural and artisanal might well be ahistorical and that we should demand more high-quality industrial food for a better future.

Of course, I was also curious of what Star Chen’s favorite food trend was in the report. To my shock, it was the flavor shock! I’ve been constantly thinking about this lately. Having listened to Charles Spence only a few days ago in Istanbul at the Gastro Economy Summit, and having read his book Gastro Physics another time, I realized that he had collaborated with Unilever years ago to work on the perception of flavors. Now writing this piece in London, where all the world flavors are intermingling and uniting in this very British and very crazy global city and having listened to inspiring food talks at the Food Season Weekend at The British Library, I realize Chen is right spot on. We’ll be talking more and more about flavor shock in the near future, a topic which will shape the palates of new generations.