Out With the Avo, In With the New

Pulled pork? So passé. Sweet potato? Past it. Avocado? Absolutely not. I am sick of all these food trends, done to death and used in all the wrong ways.

Please don’t get me wrong, there was a time where I loved pulled pork slapped on top of any meal you can imagine. But put a plateful of it in front of me now and I can’t help but roll my eyes, tasting the boredom before my fork goes near it. Similarly, a salad consisting of mainly avocado used to be the be all and end all of a perfect summer salad, yet now just seems uninspired. There is a void desperately waiting to be filled by a new ubiquitous wonder ingredient that everyone simply cannot get enough of. What that new ingredient is, however, remains to be seen.

So let’s break it down for you: You want to be the one to come up with the next big thing, but how do you appeal to everyone? For starters, you probably want to play it safe, go for something vegetarian – or even better, vegan. That’s good progress so far, right?

The next step to getting some hype around a food is picking something that’s so out there and unexpected that people can’t help but be curious. So why not try something from our very own St Andrews beaches: seaweed. While seaweed isn’t anything new, to some it’s never even been considered as edible. Why not try and make it mainstream? Abundant, cheap and easy to prepare, seaweed is surely ripe for the food trend hype train, with it being versatile enough to be deep fried or even formed into a spaghetti alternative. The appeal is there, and with some support from the right people it could be big.

Let’s say seaweed isn’t for you. Shall we go further afield and try something totally out there? One type of cuisine beginning to emerge, previously unexplored in the West, is Peruvian food. With popular dishes such as ceviche (raw fish “cooked” in the juices of citrus fruits) and even alpaca meat based meals, Peruvian food is something totally different than what can be found anywhere near St Andrews. If, like me, you’re crying out for something new to taste, then this kind of food is something to definitely look out for.

Until then, we can all just keep on putting up with sweet potato and avocado salads, nicely topped off with pulled pork until the food trend revolution hits (but please, let it be soon).

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