For 2015, restaurants look at substantive changes

When it comes to restaurant trend forecasts, there's sometimes a tendency toward the frivolous: Is kale finally wilting? Are doughnuts the new cupcakes? Will this be the year crickets become a mainstream protein?

But when chefs and forecasters look to 2015, they see more substantive changes ahead. Those have less to do with what's in fashion than with evolving technology, looming concerns about sustainability, and a pressing need to manage costs as restaurant workers seek higher wages.

Last year, we saw a range of experiments designed to answer those pressures, from prepaid, ticketed dining at Volver, to gratuities incorporated into menu prices (the French eatery Girard in Fishtown, and Vegan Commissary in South Philadelphia). And minimizing food waste, not normally a source of hype, made the news when Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov announced plans to open Rooster Soup Co., a creative answer to the 1,000 pounds of bones per week left over from Federal Donuts' fried chickens.

In the year ahead, trend spotters expect to see those pragmatic concerns manifested in new - often delicious, occasionally ridiculous - ways.

Consider Kensington Quarters, the new butcher shop and restaurant in Fishtown. The National Restaurant Association's annual chef survey reported that locally sourced meat - including unfamiliar cuts - and artisan butchery will be among the top trends this year. Kensington Quarters is already getting grass-fed beef and woodlot-pastured pork directly from area farms, and using the whole animal: serving up lasagna with pig trotters, a headcheese appetizer, and a seared beef heart.

Co-owner Michael Pasquarello said he's trying not to be trendy or do "the Portlandia thing." It's just his business model.

But he is hoping to start a new trend for 2015: goat.

"It's the most consumed meat all over the world, except for this country," he said. He plans to serve it as an alternative to lamb, which is more difficult to raise. For that to work, he said, "it requires it to be a slight trend. Bon Appétit needs to do a goat story."

Local, a byword for a decade now, will be replaced by hyper-local, according to the chef survey.

Harris Eckstut, a Philadelphia restaurant consultant, said several restaurant business plans he has reviewed lately call for hydroponic gardens in the basement.

Also on the table, according to forecasters Sterling & Rice and New York-based restaurant consultants Baum & Whiteman, are "ugly" root vegetables - think kohlrabi, celery root, and parsnips - alongside a flowering interest in such brassicas as cauliflower.

At Junto in Chadds Ford, half a dozen of the top trends for 2015 are packed into one dish: the Roots, a salad of lacto-fermented kohlrabi, sunchoke, radish, ramps, beet, green chickpea hummus, and goat kefir ranch dressing. "It's really old school, but in such a way that it's kind of new," said chef MacGregor Mann.

"I get people here at the restaurant freaking out about romanesco, because they've never seen it before. It grows all over the place in Pennsylvania, but you never see it at the grocery store," he added.

Also on tap for 2015, according to Baum & Whiteman: a continued technology revolution, beyond the iPad-wine lists; fine-dining home-delivery apps such as Caviar; and next-generation reservations systems such as Zurvu. They suggest we'll soon be ordering and paying from screens, Wawa-style, even at sit-down places, and buying drinks from bartenders wearing Google Glass to recognize regulars.

Speaking of bartenders, they will be pouring barrel-aged drinks, serving advanced culinary cocktails, and selling more micro-distilled spirits, according to the chef survey.

Sara Justice, head bartender at the Franklin, said that the last few years have been about rediscovering cocktails. Now, it's about taking them to the next level.

"Knowledge of modern techniques and equipment is huge for cocktails," she said. "In the kitchen, they've had that information for a long time."

For example, bartenders are clarifying liquids, such as milk for milk punch, or green apple juice, which Justice used in a drink in the fall. "You'll see more and more people making bitter, syrups, tinctures, and infusions - looking at what new ingredients can we put into drinks that maybe hadn't been in drinks before."

She's toasted powdered milk and infused it in rum for a creamy winter cocktail meant to recall plum pudding, made a tincture with long hots for a local spin on a Manhattan, and even married a mentholated cough drop with pine liqueur to conjure, in drinkable form, a wintry walk through the woods.

Damien Pileggi of Rival Bros. Coffee Roasters sees coffee following a similar trajectory, including expert baristas and high-quality, small-batch, single-origin ingredients. "The more people get educated about coffee, the more they expect," he said.

The new wave of artisan roasters is still growing, said Pileggi (who, incidentally, took part in one of 2014's most clever but controversial food trends: the marketing of gourmet toast, with High Street on Market bread, Trickling Spring butter, and Green Aisle jam). He said the year ahead will include a continued interest in cold brewing, and new ways of infusing flavors and tinkering with textures, such as sparkling iced coffees.

Eckstut thinks that, as more roasters arise, there will also be an evolving conception of what a coffee shop looks like, and what it sells.

"There is a tendency I see now with mixed businesses: a different business supplemented with quality coffees," he said, citing the Replica Creative Café, a coffee and copy shop in University City, and United by Blue, which sells coffee and bags. That's not to mention La Colombe's coffee shop/bakery/distillery in Fishtown.

Baum & Whiteman see other trends, too: a hummus renaissance (see: Cook and Solomonov's Dizengoff); an oyster explosion (including Jose Garces' Old City oyster house, the Olde Bar); and a focus on baking with local grains.

Food trends can be fun and palate-expanding, Pasquarello said. The danger is when they get co-opted.

"When industry starts to want to do it, then the words get abused," he said. That's what happened with grass-fed beef; cows are often started on grass and finished on a mix of grain and antibiotics that help them tolerate the diet.

"Now," he said, "you have to say grass-fed, grass-finished beef."

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