The food service business has become a global market and it is now the norm for a successful recipe in one country to gradually spread around the world. A typical example is ice cream, which can appear in any of countless different guises. Take the case of Korea, where, Host Ambassador Daniel Gray tells us, the ice cream hit of 2017 has been a traditional shaved ice topped with a sweetened tomato sauce and black pepper. The company Tokyo Bingsu that developed the dish is slowly franchising and constantly coming up with new flavours such as pumpkin, green tea and white grape. Softserve ice-cream shops are creating new flavours and designs all the time to make “Instagram-worthy” desserts, now that this social media outlet has become one of the biggest populariser of culinary trends. But it is not all plain sailing, with a halt to the rise of ice cream due to increased competition from shaved ice stores, juice shops and cafés, all of which sell what would be considered “ice-cream equivalents”. Consequently, sales of ice cream have suffered, dropping from 850 million USD in 2014 to 810 million USD in 2016 (Food Industry Statistics, Nielsen Korea).
As ice cream has begun to enjoy worldwide popularity, the variety and degree of differentiation it has achieved has become truly extreme, with a vast array of choice ranging from fresh and dried fruit to creams, yoghurt, chocolate and coffee and even “savoury” ice cream with various cheesy and herby flavours “designed to intrigue and delight the most demanding consumer palates. So are we now ready to give gelato yet another twist?” wonders food blogger Alessia Bianchi, who interviewed Filippo Novelli, the creator of the sushi gelato, and the cardamom and wasabi gelato, with tuna and salmon jellies. “People don’t actually know what they want, so it’s up to us to put ideas into their heads and inspire them. If you just going on serving up traditional flavours nothing will change and there will be no new response from sweet-toothed consumers. Gastronomic gelato will always be something that goes in waves: it might be enjoying a boom right now but that could all change in a few years. It all depends on those who believe in it.”
The focus of global trends can also shift from the contents to the container, where the trend of the moment is all about personalisation, with natural materials and unusual designs now de rigueur, as America’s Dave Turner explains. “The world of hospitality is currently experiencing what is probably the most exciting moment regarding tableware and the tabletop. Set rules have gone and chefs are seeking to stretch the imagination,” he writes. “While traditional tableware pieces are still the rule in the vast majority of restaurants and hotel dining establishments, more and more Originality chefs are seeking to differentiate themselves when it comes to how they serve their menu creations. And Originality dinnerware producers are only too happy to stretch the imagination and develop truly unique dinnerware and innovative arts de table for the Ho.Re.Ca industry.” One extreme example is “Broken Plates” by London ceramicist Maham Anjum, a concept developed in collaboration with top chef Vineet Bhatia and his wife Rashima, who explains: “I have always been interested in the idea of imperfection. The broken plates were something that Vineet had seen and we felt were true to this ethos. We wanted things with rough edges that did not have uniform dimensions. To me that is more real and perfect in its own way.”