“Sushi” used to be sort of a food buzzword that could be used to tell mainstream America that someone was an adventurous eater. People would brag that their children enjoyed sushi. Now, sushi has been pretty mainstream for years, so what’s the new food that fills that niche? What was the food that sushi replaced?
Indian food? (Especially in regards to your children eating it.)
I’m not sure if it’s the same as sushi in the realm of “adventurous” food but I think tapas is the new thing in cuisine as far as I can tell.
Brains? Bone marrow? There is (was) a restaurant called Legume Bistro in Pittsburgh. Looking up their webpage, I see they are in transition. They always have something a bit edgy on the menu.
One time they had brains (calf or lamb). Trying to freak out my kids, I ordered it. They had just run out. So I got credit for weirdness without having to eat it. They also had marrow bones as an appetizer. We didn’t have them, but everyone was raving about them as they sucked the marrow.
I was going to say Indian food too. But that may be fairly mainstream as well now.
Korean Tacos (or similar “foodie” roach-coach offerings)
tygre and I really did take our kids out for tapas over the weekend, so I’ll vote for this too.
Agreed - which strikes me as sort of amusing, since getting Indian food was such a big deal when I was a kid growing up in New Hampshire. (I’m only 27 now!) Closest Indian place to us was in Boston - scoring Indian food at Quincy Market was a very special and much-loved treat. Now Google tells me there’s at least one Indian place in Manchester and two in Nashua.
Hákarl.
I’ve heard ceviche being hyped up as “the new sushi” for several years now.
I haven’t had a bite just yet, but I think it’s basically like… Well, like sushi, actually. But from Peru. Peru!
I think this is going to vary geographically. Indian food and tapas are pretty mainstream, especially the former. Tapas is not quite as big around here, but it hasn’t been exotic or “new” for at least a decade. Tapas isn’t all that adventurous, in my opinion, although Indian food would qualify, I think.
There’s definitely been a movement fomenting over the last few years emphasizing more “tip to tail” eating that isn’t quite as mainstream yet. Organ meats, marrow, cracklings, lard, etc., are slowly becoming more and more available again (to my joy). That’s the closest I could think of as an analogue to sushi, but I don’t see it ever achieving the same sort of mainstream popularity as sushi.
I’ve also noticed a rise in the amount of places offering beefsteak tartare (another one of my favorites) and charcuterie platters (house-cured meats, sausages, pates/terrines, etc.), but those are more snacks and appetizers to eat at the bar, not really something you go out for in terms of a meal. (Granted, tapas fills a similar role, but one does go out for tapas. For me, tartare and charcuterie are just snacks.)
ETA: Also, here in Chicago, goat has been getting more and more mainstream play. With the large Mexican population here, they’ve always been around in the form of birrierias, but it’s not until relatively recently that I’ve seen them get much traction outside the Mexican population. In fact, if you search Yelp for “restaurants” in Chicago, IL, and rank it by rating, a goat place by my house ranks as the #2 restaurant in Chicago according to Yelp users, behind Alinea (!)
I… I’m… I want to hear more about this.
Here’s a local eatery, the Purple Pig, focusing on pork, that has some examples of what I’m talking about. It’s not really organ-meat heavy, but it contains pig ears, pig tails, blood sausage (morcilla), sweet & sour tongue, crostini with lard, pork liver pate, tripe, and pork belly, for example.
The winner of one of those food network shows started up a restaurant called Girl and the Goat here. You’ll see roasted pig face on the menu, along with lamb tartare, skewered beef heart, beef tongue, goat carpaccio, goat liver pate, pork fat donuts, and the like. So that one actually combines both the goat trend with the “everything but the oink/moo/bleat” trend.
sushi? between sushi and now there was tofu, soy milk, hummus, green tea, herbal tea, green tea again, and kabobs. in fact, i think kabobs is still going on…
ethiopian food had a false start, and it seems to be making a comeback but… fool me once and all that jazz.
I would have said Indian was mainstream before sushi, but I guess that’s just my experience.
Yeah, Ethiopian is another one I thought of. It’s been kind of a known ethnicity of cuisine that people specifically go out for since I was in college ('93-'98), but, like you said, it has kind of made a false start. I never really saw it gaining the traction Indian and Thai, for instance, have.
Now, if we can only get some South African/Mozambican style piri-piri/peri-peri places to start popping up everywhere, I’d be a happy man.
Ethiopian never really moved into the mainstream. There are quite a few places in DC, but very few in the suburbs.
Curiously, enough there is a chain called Nando’s that seems to be expanding.
This seems to be trendy and fashionable here as well.
Yep, I know of that place very well–it’s from South Africa. Have never had a chance to recently be in the D.C. area, unfortunately. We could get the sauces here, though.
Angus beef seems to be making it’s way down the food snobbery hierarchy to the point where Arby’s, Quizno’s and Burger King are now selling it…
Feast here in Houston offers “tip to tail” eating, although quite a few things on the menu might be fairly traditional in the UK. Interestingly exotic here in the home of Tex-Mex, Mex-Mex, Cajun/Creole, Soul & Barbecue–plus offerings from immigrants hailing from just about everywhere else.
Honestly, I don’t know what we’d consider “the new sushi” in Houston.