Modern food moves at a bewildering pace. Where once, influences from star chefs would disseminate slowly and new products could take years to establish themselves, today rare ingredients and new dishes can proliferate online, globally, almost instantly. On Instagram, a coalition of food nerds - not just chefs, but (amateur) bakers, baristas, brewers and artisan producers - are generating a creative frenzy of new ideas and potential break-out trends.
It is exhausting. It is exciting. The ideas are often ludicrous. Yet food’s appetite for the new is currently insatiable. The next menu you read will invariably be filled with words such as kefir (a fermented milk drink) or tsukune (Japanese chicken meatballs) that would stump all but the most painfully cool of diners. But, fear not. Together we can make sense of this head-spinning, at times stomach-turning world - with this, the ultimate hipster food glossary.
Jackfruit
Whopping great south-east Asian fruit being pulled hither and thither as vegetarians recognise its fibrous potential as an alternative to pork.
Pét-nat
Wine! Would you just stand still for a minute! No sooner had we got our collective head around orange wine (grapes fermented skin-on for greater complexity), natural wine (minimal chemical/mechanical intervention) and biodynamic wine (hippy, mumbo-jumbo wine) than up pops low-tech pet-nat - or petillant naturale - a subset of softly sparkling, cloudy wines bottled midway through their first wild fermentation, to create raw, exciting plonk. Or unpredictable rubbish. Depending on your POV.
Kalettes
Hispi (cabbage) and crosnes (tiny Chinese artichokes) ran it close, but if you want to name-drop a fashionable vegetable this season, it has to be Kalettes, a trademarked kale/brussels sprout crossbreed that produces sprout-sized kale cabbages. Think of it as the new plango (the plum-mango hybrid) or a sequel to the cronut (the croissant-doughnut). Only less fun.
Turbo G&T
A G&T spiked with cold-brew coffee, which everyone (okay, the style mags after it blew up on “Insta”), is calling, “the new espresso martini”.
Calçots
An overgrown Catalan spring onion? or is it the Iberian leek? Either way, suddenly visible in ambitious UK restaurants where we heathens often eat the whole thing, not just the sweet white bulb, usually charred and eaten dipped in romesco. Brindisa’s traditional cal?otada feast is served in London throughout March.
Cacao nibs
The in-crowd loves to shroud trendy ingredients in linguistic mystery. Hence why these unprocessed shards of what we used to happily call cocoa beans are now referred to by their Spanish name (derived from the Aztec language, Nahuatl). These bitter, chocolatey pieces are scattered across everything from porridge to Michelin-star desserts.
Miso caramel
Salt? Using salt to season food? What are you, a barbarian? No. All the cool kids now use miso, with miso caramel (the new, super-charged salted caramel), promising to be its big, crossover hit. “You get the salinity but with added umami, making it more savoury and complex,” says British chef Nick Grieves.
#icemanpour
Instagram-driven idiocy (do you see a theme emerging?) that - for reasons unknown - has seen craft beer “fans” take to pouring murky beers in a way that leaves the glass brim-full with zero head. Result: the beer looks horribly flat and is impossible to drink.
Golden milk
The clean-eating cabal is really pushing turmeric's health benefits, often in the form of this blend of nut milk and turmeric root, also known as a turmeric latte. Writing for Food52, Mayukh Sen concluded: "It's a hideously awful drink." He pointed out that in India, this bitter concoction (in Hindi, haldi doodh) is used to nurse sick children. Essentially, this is a Calpol cappuccino. But mystical. And romantic. Because ayurveda, yeah?
Unicorn
If you thought the freakshake was peak infantilisation for modern food, think again. Unicorn is all about turning cakes, bakes, shakes and even the occasional toastie into eye-watering, multicoloured monstrosities, using a rainbow of food dyes, sprinkles (known as unicorn food), edible glitters and tiny marshmallows. It has already spread (like devastating wildfire? contagious disease?) across Instagram and Pinterest, to, last month, ITV's This Morning. At least, that cookery item was aimed at parents entertaining their kids at half-term, instead of ostensibly functioning adults who take this cutesy-wutesy, cartoon nonsense seriously.
Poké
The collective term for various colourful, soy-dressed Hawaiian raw fish salads, poké (rhymes with okay, not bloke) is big news in the UK and the States and is on the way here.
Matcha Mille crepe cake
Multi-layered pancake ‘n’ cream stack infused and/or dusted with vivid green matcha tea. Think: the Incredible Hulk does Bake Off. Does it taste nice? No idea. But it looks stunning on Instagram, which, in 2017, is far more important.
Dank
The descriptor du jour (among craft-beer geeks keen to suggest they took drugs once), for IPAs that have a resinous, sticky, skunk weed character. Tip: up the ante by insisting you are “coming up too fast” on your 9% DIPA (double IPA).
Root-to-shoot
Nose-to-tail for the flexitarian generation; a waste-minimal ethos of cooking that embraces the whole plant. Damn tasty if we're talking about deep-fried Jerusalem artichoke skin.
Khachapuri
Want to freak out your hipster friends? Casually mention khachapuri. Recently tipped by Restaurant magazine, this Georgian speciality has a growing cult status in the US, but is largely unknown here. However, it is only a matter of time before someone enterprising takes khachapuri - imagine a pizza-like dough-boat filled with cheese, eggs and butter - and makes it massive. What’s not to like?
– Guardian News and Media 2017
