Top 10 food and drink trends for 2016

With the start of every new year comes talk of clean slates and fresh starts. Resolutions are resolutely made but rarely kept.

Rather than making unrealistic promises to stay off the sauce in January, we at db prefer to gaze into our crystal ball to bring you what we believe will be the biggest trends to rock the food and drink scene in the coming year.

With London enjoying its status as the culinary capital of the world, the pace of change in the city is lightening quick, making trends hard to predict, but we’ve come up with ten we think will make an impact this year, from the emergence of immersive dining to the rise of Alpine food and wine.

Whether our predictions come true or not, one thing is for certain; there’s never been a more exciting time to be a food and wine lover in the UK.

1: Immersive dining

Chefs and restaurateurs are latching on to the power of storytelling and are weaving both narratives and characters into their concepts. Light years ahead on the trend was culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal, who championed the idea of multi-sensory dining at The Fat Duck long before it started trickling down to more mainstream venues.

Last autumn, Blumenthal turned his menu into a childhood memory of a day at the seaside, with the dishes following a narrative from breakfast to bedtime. Other venues are creating characters to add credibility and creative flair to their concepts, from eccentric aunt Wilhelmina and “wicked” uncle Seymour at the Zetter Townhouse, to Otto and Maria Fischer, the fictitious Viennese owners of Corbin and King’s Fischer’s in Marylebone.

Storytelling will be taken a step further this year, as diners demand not only a front row seat to the action, but to become part of the show itself. We’ll see a rise in immersive dining experiences like last year’s successful Twin Peaks supper club, where diners were taken down the rabbit hole into the surreal world of director David Lynch’s cult TV show.

Bars will also become more interactive in nature, like last summer’s pop-up Breaking Bad cocktail lab operating out of a cream-coloured RV in Hackney, where revellers were encouraged to make molecular cocktails from test tubes and drink them out of measuring beakers.

2: Single dish restaurants

While the single dish restaurant is nothing new in London, the trend will continue to mushroom this year as no choice becomes the concept of choice for the capital’s savvy restaurateurs. Pioneered by the likes of Chicken Shop, MeatLiquor and Bubbledogs, which made heroes of fried chicken, burgers and hot dogs, last year saw less likely culinary candidates thrown into the spotlight.

Balls & Co in Soho decided to champion the humble meatball, offering it in an array of guises with a selection of sauces, while the nearby Melt Room showed the cheese toastie some love and Bao on Soho’s Lexington Street introduced Londoners to the delights of fluffy steamed buns stuffed with pork and peanuts. No prizes for guessing what Les Souffles in Knightsbridge specialises in, while at neighbouring Tartufi & Friends in Harrods, dishes arrive blanketed in truffles.

Single dish restaurants appeal to cash-rich, time-poor Londoners who, overloaded by a never-ending stream of information in their daily lives, find relief in not having to make yet another decision when they sit down to eat. The danger however, is that they may spawn a generation of under-skilled chefs incapable of little more than being able to flip a burger or perfect a pizza.

3: Single cocktail specialists

Perhaps inspired by the burgeoning trend for single dish restaurants, we’re starting to see single cocktail specialists emerge in the capital. Last autumn, the team behind iconic Barcelona bar Dry Martini opened a London outpost at the Meliá White House hotel in Regent’s Park shining a light on James Bond’s tipple of choice. Bar manager Martin Siska favours gin over vodka for the signature serve. Adding an interactive element, guests keen to mix their own Martini can do so from a counter boasting 80 different gins and an array of bitters.

Across town, the Nightjar’s head bartender, Marian Beke, recently struck out with his debut solo venture, The Gibson on Old Street, which flags up the classic cocktail made with gin and vermouth, and garnished with a pickled onion. Among Beke’s twists is a Dry Gibson featuring Martini Riserva Ambrato and hazelnut, while the classic serve is made with Tanqueray, Noily Prat dry vermouth and a pickled olive.

Also giving special attention to a single cocktail is Wringer & Mangle in London Fields, headed up by Gerry Calabrese, which celebrates the Collins. Traditionally made with gin, lemon, sugar and soda water, Calabrese riffs on the classic in a disused launderette via the likes of the Chairman’s Collins, which switches gin for Chairman’s Reserve rum.

4: Bottomless brunch

With breakfast having been championed last year by newcomers the Cereal Killer Café on Brick Lane and Bad Egg in Moorgate, the “bottomless brunch” concept looks set to go mainstream in 2016. Already an institution in the US and with ex-pats in Dubai, brunch made serious waves in London last year and its popularity is showing no signs of slowing. The term “brunch” was coined as far back as 1895 in Hunter’s Weekly to describe a Sunday meal for “Saturday night carousers”.

Ideal for duvet worshipers nursing hellish hangovers, this magnificent meal between breakfast and lunch is being made all the more alluring by the prospect of the very American idea of unlimited refills on everything from flutes of Prosecco to Bloody Marys, encouraging the hair of the dog approach to help you power on through the day.

Among some of the capital’s most enticing bottomless brunches are at the aforementioned Bad Egg, which offers three dishes and unlimited Mimosas for £30; Mews of Mayfair, which charges £15 for bottomless Bellinis; Yolk in Haggerston, where £20 will get you one dish and unlimited Prosecco; and Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings in Clerkenwell, which serves bubble & squeak, eggs royale and bottomless Bloody Marys for £15. 

5: Alpine food and wine

One of this year’s more unexpected trends is the emergence of Alpine food and wine on Londoners’ radars. Flying the Bavarian flag is German Gymnasium in King’s Cross, a cavernous yet cosy restaurant from the D&D London group housed in a Grade II listed former gym complete with dizzyingly high ceilings and climbing hooks.

Championing the often unloved and much misunderstood Mittel-European cuisine, which straddles Germany, Austria, Hungary and Alsace, among the best of the dishes on offer is a gargantuan veal schnitzel whose fabric-like folds cascade off the plate. The Black Forest smoked ham is equally unmissable. Wines are almost entirely made up of Mittel-European names, making it difficult for diners to decipher, but D&D’s decision signals a step in the right direction in introducing consumers to these delicious niche drops.

Also keen to show Alpine food and wine some love are Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who have long championed Viennese cuisine at grand café The Delaunay in Covent Garden, and more recently at Fischer’s in Marylebone. The dynamic duo’s latest project, Bellanger in Islington, is inspired by Alsatian brasseries in Belle Époque Paris. Opening late last year, it serves the likes of coq au Riesling, baeckeoffe and tartes flambées alongside Alsatian wines and blonde beers on tap.

6: Bag-in-box wines

Another curveball trend that looks set to gather speed in 2016 is that of quality wine served in the bag-in-box format at restaurants. Early to pioneer the idea was Hamish Anderson, who started selling Bordeaux in a box at the Tate Modern and Tate Britain’s restaurants last summer. Named Indigo, the Merlot/Cabernet from Château Civrac in the Côtes de Bourg was blended by Anderson after owner Mark Hellyar approached him with the aim of changing consumer perceptions of BiB wine.

“There’s no need for bag-in-box wine to only be associated with the bottom end of the market, hence my desire to house it in a posh box printed with high quality inks. While it’s designed for immediate drinking, the wine will happily keep for a year,” says Hellyar.

Vinoteca’s various sites across the capital have long embraced bag-in-box wine, while new to the game are Albertine in Shepherd’s Bush, Terroirs in Covent Garden and Fergus Henderson’s St. John in Smithfield, which serves a Languedoc red blend, white blend and rosé in boxes emblazoned with the restaurant’s pig logo. Cementing the trend, in November Kirsty Tinkler launched a pop-up natural wine bar called B.I.B at the Brunswick East café in Dalston, where all wines were served from a box.

7: Wine by the glass specialists

While last year saw “game changer” the Coravin – wine’s equivalent of a magic wand – blaze a trail across the UK on-trade, allowing forward-thinking venues like 28-50 and Avenue in St. James’s to dip into their cellars and offer up vintage treasures by the measure, this year we’ll see the emergence of wine by the glass specialist sites keen to capitalise on the freedom Coravin offers for experimentation.

One such place is Les 110 de Taillevent in Cavendish Square, run by Château Phélan Ségur owners the Gardinier brothers. Based on a sister site in Paris, the London outpost offers a whopping 110 wines by the glass running the gamut from a humble Domaine Lafond Reuilly 2013 for £5 to Domaine Leflaive Chevalier Montrachet 2006 for £74 a glass.

Another newcomer keen to introduce consumers to fine wines by the glass is Noble Rot on Lamb’s Conduit Street, the wine bar offshoot of the successful food and wine quarterly run by Mark Andrew and Dan Keeling. With former St. John and The Sportsman chef Paul Weaver at the helm, among the signature dishes is turbot braised in oxidized 1998 Batard-Montrachet. Wines by the glass range from £4-23, and include Domaine Louis Carillon et Fils Les Champs Canet Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru 2009 for £23.

8: Crab

Having gone clucking mad for chicken, bonkers for burgers and loco for lobster, London’s latest single-dish obsession is crab, which looks set to be the crustacean of choice in 2016. Crab Tavern in Broadgate Circle kicked off the trend last summer. Inspired by New York’s numerous crab shacks, the spacious site serves sweet & savoury king crab brioche donuts; crab mash and the curious sounding “bucket boil”, a mash up of crab claws, lobster, mussels, sausage and sweetcorn.

Also sinking his claws into the trend is Dominic Jacobs with House of Crab; a pop-up next to his Running Horse pub in Mayfair. Keen to champion homegrown critters, crabs are delivered daily from Devon and are served either hot and buttered or cold with house mayo in brioche buns.

The El Jimaclaw roll is rammed with white and brown crab meat, chilli, avocado, salsa and sour cream, while the Crabfather boasts burrata, Parma ham and confit tomatoes. Crab mac ’n’ cheese and thermidor crab cakes also make welcome cameos. Meanwhile, this year will see the opening of the first London site of popular New York restaurant Fatty Crab, whose signature dish, snow crab with chili sauce, sounds finger-licking good.

9: Tea pubs

A curious trend for pubs specialising in loose-leaf tea is brewing in the capital and looks set to reach boiling point this year. Stoke Newington boozer The Daniel Defoe recently relaunched as The Stoke Newington Tea House offering 100 different loose-leaf teas and a selection of tea-based cocktails known as “cockteas”, though beer lovers needn’t steer clear, as it also sells an ample range of cask ales for those seeking a stronger sip.

A number of herbs and leaves for the infusions are grown on-site in an “urban cultivator”, while a world map pinpointing where all the teas are sourced from adorns one of the walls. Meanwhile, London start-up Brew secured £229,330 in crowd funding last summer to launch a tea pub serving pots of loose-leaf tea, cakes and “cockteas” like the Earl Grey Martini in a pub setting.

Founder Alex Holland hopes to open the first Brew in South London this year. “Brew speaks to something in our culture that has been lost, and we’re finding a new way to value it. Tea is so much more than a drink; it’s a part of how we define ourselves in this country,” says Holland.

10: Mead

The trend for mead has been threatening to go mainstream for years, but we predict 2016 is the time for honey wine to shine. With over 250 boutique mead producers carving a niche in the US and hoping to enjoy similar success to the craft beer movement, the UK is behind on the trend, though the popularity of TV series Game of Thrones, where goblets of mead are enjoyed, has helped thrust the medieval tipple back into the spotlight.

Blazing a honeyed trail in London is Tom Gosnell, who makes over 5,000 bottles of semi-sweet, lightly sparkling “Gosnells” mead a month from citrus blossom honey at a meadery in Peckham. Mead is one of the earliest known alcoholic drinks with roots stretching back 7,000 years. Name-checked in everything from Chaucer to Beowulf, many meads are flavoured with fruits and spices, from apples and mulberries to cinnamon.

London bars are catching on to its charms, with Fogg’s Tavern in Covent Garden flogging A Fanny in Mead, made with mead, vodka, lemon, mandarin bitters and basil, while the Reverend JW Simpson in Goodge Street serves the Mead Feast, featuring mead, basil, quince liqueur and lemon juice.