I’m already seeing strange items like barracuda popping up on local menus, but before I go ahead and declare this the year of the fang-toothed fish outright, I hit up a brain trust of top local food experts for opinions on what’s really going to happen in the restaurant world this year: Restaurant and hospitality consultant Andrew Freeman, Tablehopper founder Marcia Gagliardi, SF Weekly restaurant critic Anna Roth, Eater SF editor Allie Pape, Inside Scoop columnist Paolo Lucchesi, and Alcademics proprietor Camper English.
Several on the panel have noticed big shifts in the restaurant world when it comes to considering basics like tipping and reservations.
“More restaurants will likely eliminate tipping in favor of a service fee, following the example of several in San Francisco and the East Bay (and around the country),” forecasts Anna Roth. “The traditional way of making reservations will also continue to see a shakeup — more apps, more restaurants adopting the ticketing system, and so on. Both of these seem like natural progressions of concepts we take for granted but have maybe outlasted their usefulness in their current form.”
Whether it’s incorporating family style dishes or tasting menus, restaurants are also re-examining serving styles and portion sizes. And now that pop-ups have proven to be more than just a fad, the restaurant world is starting to dabble more openly with temporary concepts and spaces.
“Restaurants will continue to be less restricted by permanence,” says Paolo Lucchesi. “Also, I think we’ll continue to see more tasting menus of all sizes and prices, since that usually helps restaurants manage costs.”
“I’m happy to see lame small plates that are hard to share go away,” says Marcia Gagliardi. “It seems places are paying more attention to the shareability of dishes. I’m so fired up on the family-style/banquet format at The Progress — I think many other restaurants will take note. Some places are also trying to offer more affordable tasting menus.”
“I’d love to see fewer small plates and more family-style restaurants like The Progress, or at least places with heartier portion sizes that don’t require three to four plates per person,” adds Roth. “And I hope we’ll start to see restaurants reconsidering their entire carbon footprint beyond just local sourcing, following the example of The Perennial.”
Simple foods tend to blow up each year, and after a few years of seeing some attempts rise and fall, “I have this gut feeling that 2015 is the year SF will finally get a decent bagel shop,” says Allie Pape. “We have too many transplanted New Yorkers flooding in to not have someone rise to that challenge.” And too many people willing to wait for hours for multi-day-old NY bagels.
“I love everyday Chinese restaurants,” she continues, “but I’m also excited about seeing some new ones that bring sustainability and housemade ingredients into the picture, like Fat Noodle and Mister Jiu.”
“I’m predicting a rise in regional, seasonal, ingredient-driven Chinese food, thanks to Brandon Jew’s new Chinatown restaurant [Mister Jiu] and China Live,” adds Roth.
Camper English is one of this region’s most comprehensive drink reporters and well versed in how the international needle is moving. He hopes that cocktails in general will lighten up, already: “I’d love to see a return to brighter fizzier flavors after years of brown, bitter, and stirred,” he says.
“I think the craft distilling scene is just getting warmed up and we’ll start to see a lot more local boozes, maybe even from bar owners,” notes Roth.
English would also like to see some originality this year when it comes to bar design: “I think we’ll see less cocktail bars that look like ‘cocktail bars’ with the reclaimed wood, tin ceilings, and Edison bulbs,” he predicts. “Or at least I hope we will.”
“It’s also interesting to watch this shift from really boozy/spirituous drinks happen,” says Gagliardi. “There are a bunch more low-ABV cocktails now available out there, which are better to have with food anyway.”
There are plenty of food and drink trends that could and should subside this year.
“As the price of a liquor license continues to rise, I imagine cocktail-centric restaurants might be quelled a bit,” muses Pape. “There just aren’t enough spaces with full liquor to go around, unless you’ve got very deep pockets. That goes triply for the Mission.”
“I’m hoping the 15-ingredient cocktail is on its way out,” wishes Andrew Freeman. “Simple two or three ingredient cocktails let the quality of the booze shine through.”
“I can’t imagine we have much bandwidth or demand left for more juice bars, but maybe I’m just not alkaline — or cash-positive — enough to see the appeal,” says Pape.
Some of the experts surveyed expressed a wish to reduce the ubiquity of items like uni (sea urchin) and octopus. They were divided on whether or not they’d like to see kale wither away, including one vocal vote in support of it to keep on keepin’ on (“The kale Caesar can stay,” says Roth. “I like the kale Caesar, haters be damned”).
2015 is not likely to see a curtailment of experimenting when it comes to playing with food, but at least one hopes this is not just to troll for attention.
“I’d love to see less stunt food aimed at grabbing headlines,” posits Lucchesi, “but who knows if that will happen.”
Photo by Tamara Palmer
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