Creative use of ingredients is a sure-fire way to keep customers engaged, and chefs have stepped up to the plate recently with a range of new foods and flavors. Thanks to more adventurous diners, they have a ready audience for their innovations.
Premium touches. In an unexpected test-market initiative, Wendy’s has introduced a Truffle Bacon Cheeseburger. The earthy fungus, which is usually found on fine-dining menus, appears in both truffle aïoli and truffle Parmesan cheese sauce. In an equally surprising move, Arby’s has added a pork belly sandwich to its successful Smokehouse line. Typically the province of higher-end independents, the pork belly at Arby’s is hickory-smoked, then topped with smoked Cheddar and barbecue sauce. First Watch’s Fig & Prosciutto Toast brings the prized Italian salumi to the breakfast-and-lunch segment, while fast-casual pizza specialist Your Pie nodded to its Athens, Ga., roots with a promotional Peach Prosciutto Pie. In addition to the title ingredients, it included freshly chopped basil finished with a honey-balsamic glaze.
Sweet heat. The combination of sweet and spicy has long been a popular pairing in restaurant entrées, and research-and-development chefs have been emboldened to push the envelope beyond the center of the plate. The recent past has seen the introduction of Starbucks’ Chile Mocha, which combines espresso and steamed milk topped with ancho and cayenne pepper, cinnamon, paprika, sugar and sea salt. Bruster’s Real Ice Cream similarly tweaked taste buds with its Cayenne Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream, a summer special that combined chocolate with cayenne and cinnamon. On a related fiery note, Buffalo sauce, which emerged from its hometown in New York to take menus by storm a couple of decades back, is getting a second wind beyond its original use with chicken wings. Next-gen applications use the sauce in conjunction with vegetables. For example, the Spicy Buffalo Cauliflower recently added as a small plate at California Pizza Kitchen features cauliflower florets tossed in housemade Sriracha Buffalo sauce. Meanwhile, Moneygun, a bar in Chicago, gives the Buffalo treatment to okra.
Sweet and savory. On a similar note, menus are chockablock with items that marry sweet and savory elements. Shake Shack shook up the frozen dessert category this summer with the Butter Coffee Blend Concrete made with vanilla custard, butter-coffee caramel sauce and shortbread cookie, an apparent nod to the brief butter-coffee boomlet. More recently, The Counter Burger introduced The Giving Bird, a limited-time-only sandwich in which a turkey patty is finished with a pomegranate-molasses glaze and topped with fried sweet potato strings, cranberry relish and homemade pomegranate-barbecue sauce. Fast-casual pizza specialist Pizza Rev recently unveiled the Maple-Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Bacon Pizza, a seasonal special in which locally sourced Brussels sprouts are roasted in-house daily and tossed in maple syrup.
Sweet indulgences. Recognizing our collective sweet tooth and our propensity to treat ourselves when we dine out, restaurateurs are busily exploiting the menu pleasure principle. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, which operates in 27 countries, has given its bill of fare an international flare with specialties like the Tiramisu Doughnut topped with a dark chocolate drizzle, sprinkled with chocolate-cake crumbs and crowned with a chocolate coffee bean. The chain’s Crème Brûlée Doughnut comes filled with vanilla bean custard and is dipped in dark caramel icing and topped with crème brûlée flakes. Friendly’s looked to the Netherlands for inspiration for its Cookie Butter Ice Cream flavor featuring brown-sugary speculoos cookie pieces and a cookie butter swirl. And sweet seekers can satisfy their craving first thing in the morning with Denny’s Sticky Bun Pancake Breakfast, which includes the requisite pecans, cinnamon sauce and cream cheese icing.
Spirited sauces. The use of wine, beer and spirits has become a standard in the menu R&D playbook, but the recent past has seen increased activity and creativity in the category. To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Hard Rock Cafe promoted a Guinness and Jameson Boca Burger — a winning double header for fans of classic Irish quaffs. The Greene Turtle tops its tenders with raspberry-moonshine sauce, while Umami Burger deserves a special nod for the Negroni BBQ Burger, which cleverly invoked the newly hip classic cocktail with its Campari-and-cola barbecue sauce.
Nancy Kruse, president of the Kruse Company, is a menu trends analyst based in Atlanta. As one of LinkedIn’s Top 100 Influencers in the U.S., she blogs regularly on food-related subjects on the LinkedIn website.
Photos courtesy of California Pizza Kitchen, Starbucks and Denny's