If your New Year's Resolution is to "be more adventurous," this is the list for you. Writing for Time, Josh Ozersky lays out the five foods that he predicts will be hot in 2012, while admitting that these forecasts are typically "about as reliable as the photos on a Latvian dating site." That's because food writers consistently overestimate how much Americans will glom on to ethnic foods—Peruvian food hasn't exactly taken the country by storm, he notes. But "that doesn’t mean that things aren’t changing," writes Ozersky, who presents a pretty exotic list:
- Banh Mi: If you want to seem adventurous without actually having to be adventurous, these Vietnamese sandwiches (pronounced bon-mee) are for you. They're basically "crispy French bread filled with fresh, bright, firm vegetables, hot sauce, and what usually looks like six different kinds of pork."
- Dim Sum: When classics from this bite-size approach to dining start popping up at California Pizza Kitchen (now available: dumplings!), you know something is about to enter the mainstream. Writes Ozersky, "having a bunch of small Chinese dishes and calling them dim sum instead of appetizers has finally sunk in for good."
- Yuzu: Yep, another Asian item, this time a Japanese citrus that, in flavor and appearance, is lemon-like. What's the appeal? "Yuzu has offered chefs the same free ride that banh mi brought diners: the ability to seem worldly while secretly hewing to the exact same flavor profiles one might have found in any Eisenhower-era luncheonette."
Click for items 4 and 5 ...
one of which is, yep, Asian. (More
food trends stories.)