I just did a newspaper archive search for salt water taffy and found the earliest mention in 1896. In 1898 it was regularly advertised by a candy company in Chester, Pennsylvania.
There was a teppanyaki place we went to when I was a kid in the early '60s. But it was called Japanese Fried Shrimp. I was so sad when it closed because that was the best shrimp I’d ever tasted…and not fried, it was grilled on the teppankaki grill.
I also remember the short-lived “artisanal” craze of a few years ago.
When you break it down, it’s basically just a meat-and-starch combo like any number of others that have existed throughout human history, and it can be made either sweet or savory depending on whether you top it with syrup or with gravy. I’ve also seen it served as a sandwich, with boneless white meat chicken in between two waffle “buns”.
I have a vague idea that a chili cheese waffle would also be a delicious combo, but I haven’t yet found a chili that has the right consistency and flavor profile.
I never heard of chicken and waffles until just a year or so ago. They definitely were not a thing in West Texas or anywhere else I’ve lived until recently. At first I thought maybe a Deep South dish, but now it seems to be Back East?
Wikipedia says the modern-day soul food version has origins in the African-American diaspora and cites Harlem and LA as early places where it was served.
When I lived in Cambridge, England, in the '70s, there was a Canadian expatriate who opened a place called “Waffles,” where waffles were the only thing on the menu. They came both sweet and savory; my favorite variety was with ham and melted cheese.
It’s been around in NYC “soul food” (for want of a better term) restaurants as long as I can remember, and I’m in my sixties.
You’re absolutely right- the re-rise of rye whiskey coincided pretty closely with the cocktail renaissance in about 2002-2003. I recall in college, we could get Old Overholt or Jim Beam Rye, and it was CHEAP. Which was great, as it is pretty good with Coke, which is how we did it back then.
Historically speaking, rye was the post-Revolutionary successor to rum (molasses became harder to obtain) as the most popular American spirit, right up to Prohibition. Most “classic” whiskey cocktails were originally rye cocktails- the Sazerac, the Manhattan, and yes, the Old Fashioned.
After Prohibition bourbon took over for a variety of reasons- corn subsidies, bad PR/lax Canadian labeling standards, etc…
And it definitely appears to be the case that the style and name “salt water taffy” originated with Atlantic City NJ candy shops in the late 19th century. Though I agree that legend of its “accidental discovery” via a wave splash is not convincing.
That’s more of a marketing thing, though. The food didn’t change, just the way it was described. Kinda like how 5 years ago every time someone made a list of random shit, it was “curated”
Ghost peppers. Never heard of them until about 15 years ago. They reigned briefly and now they seem to have been replaced by Carolina Reapers as the insanely hot chili pepper du jour.
I think in general, all this is sort of a response to a consumer desire for variety. I mean, there’s generally no absolute need for my local Wal-Mart to stock four or five different sorts/brands of coconut oil alone, not to mention the walnut, avocado, 15 kinds of olive, corn, soybean, canola, peanut, safflower, and grapeseed oils. But people like that kind of thing, so they stock it.
What’s new in the past couple of decades is that with the rise of the Internet, word-of-mouth is a much more powerful thing, both locally AND nationally. I mean, I might hear about some new food trend from someone 500 miles away, and then go hunt it down locally. Or I might hear about the new local restaurants via the Internet in a way that I never would have been able to in 1993.
I think that’s a big part of why we see these fads all sort of springing up in the late 1990s/early 2000s- the Internet let everyone interested in something get together and compare notes.
I think what you’re calling “short-lived” the food industry would call “emergent”. The “artisanal” label for various foods—butter, cheese, bread, yogurt, you name it—has definitely not gone away.
AFAICT “artisanal” is not such an attention-getting term any more simply because it’s become so commonplace. Same thing that happened previously to the specialized descriptor “gourmet”.
I’ll put a little chili on a few bites of waffle if I happen to order both at Waffle House. It’s good. A cornmeal waffle with chili would be delicious. I like sausage gravy and egg on half a waffle and then syrup and butter on the other half.
I remember back when buying blue cheese meant grabbing a package that said blue cheese on it. Nowadays I search through the cheeses to find Maytag or better. 
That’s mostly because almost no one knew they existed, until it was reported by an Indian lab (possibly for the use of non lethal weapons) around 2000 that their scoville numbers were off the charts and then all of a sudden people wanted them.
Yeah, the way I remember it – I’m looking through a “hot wing challenge” video I did – was that 13 years ago, the Red Savina habanero was still kind of the big boy with the hot pepper breeds at least in terms of popular availability. That was the pepper advertised for that local challange. So that’s, what 2008? My memory is also that just about that time was when the ghost pepper started showing up and was still considered pretty exotic, though known among pepper heads. I grew my first batches right around 2009, I think. Then the Trinidad Scorpion pepper showed up on the scene, and then the Carolina reaper. Now, I can get any of those plants at my local plant nursery as seedlings. In 2010, I had to buy them and grow them from seed (at least the ghost. I think the other two peppers showed up slightly after that – I wanna say ~2012 for the scorpion and a few years later for the reaper.
And in Atlanta since the 1980’s.
Comes out of the African-American tradition. Saturday and Sunday mornings, it wasn’t uncommon to see lines of people outside of Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles on Peachtree Street.
That was, until the restaurant failed three health inspections, and the manager, Knight’s son, was arrested on felony theft charges for allegedly pocketing $650,000 out of the chain, and failing to pay taxes.
Some general trends that I’ve seen over the years:
- Kale (it seemed like it only used to be used decoratively at buffet bars, now it is one of the staple leafy greens)
- Sour beers (ie. using lactobacillus or similar) - while there have been Belgian beers with this style for a long time, it seems to have exploded in the North American brewing scene over the last decade
- Plant-based meat substitutes - unlike a lot of vegetarian options in the past, the new ones are looking to replicate the taste of meat, for the growing market of people who want to reduce their meat consumption but still like the taste of meat
And some trends that I’ve observed locally, that I assume have also shown up in other cities:
- Fancy doughnuts - it used to be that Tim Horton’s or similar joints were the only places to get doughnuts, but nowadays a large niche has been carved for better quality doughnuts that cost 3x the price
- Likewise, small-batch ice cream is immensely popular these days in my city (the most popular being trendy local chains, rather than mom-and pop scoop shops)
- Bubble tea has seen a renaissance with dozens of new places opening up in the past 2 years (many being chains from Taiwan)
- “Cultural appropriation” restaurants - eg. upper scale Indian/Chinese/Mexican/other ethnic foods that are marketed towards well-off white hipsters (eg. have trendy decor, modernized fusion twists to the menu, fancy cocktails and heavily inflated prices relative to more traditional restaurants)
- Korean fried chicken - everywhere these days, and I love it