Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / 2025 Culinary Trends & Predictions | Chef's PSA Podcast Ep. 132

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2025 Culinary Trends & Predictions | Chef's PSA Podcast Ep. 132 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chefs PSA Podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host Andre Natera. On today's episode, I'm going to
• 0:05
  give you my predictions for the 2025 culinary industry.
• 0:09
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• 2:00
  Now on to today's episode. So I wanted to make this episode
• 2:04
  because I made 2024 predictions last year.
• 2:09
  I think about half of them came true.
• 2:11
  It's not that I was wrong, it's just I'm not right yet.
• 2:14
  So this year I put a little bit more thought into it.
• 2:17
  So last year I said, where did I get these predictions from?
• 2:20
  Well, a lot of it was from talking to chefs, my own ideas,
• 2:24
  doing this, sticking my finger in the wind, seeing which
• 2:27
  direction it's blowing. This year I did a little bit
• 2:30
  more research. I still continue to talk to my
• 2:32
  chef friends, paying attention to what's going on in the media,
• 2:35
  going out to different restaurants and eating, having
• 2:38
  the conversations on the podcast.
• 2:40
  And not just on the podcast, but there's a lot of conversations
• 2:42
  that happened off the podcast that people don't want to
• 2:45
  discuss on air about the direction that the industry is
• 2:47
  going. So this is me kind of pulling
• 2:49
  all that information together and adding my own assumptions to
• 2:53
  it all. I could be wrong or I could be
• 2:57
  not right yet. So nonetheless, today is my top
• 3:00
  10 predictions that I'm going to get with you.
• 3:02
  So you could stay ahead of the curve.
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  My first prediction is that fine dining is going to evolve and
• 3:08
  it's not going to be what we remember fine dining of the past
• 3:12
  years. I talked about this recently in
• 3:15
  a podcast with David Sucio where we got into the conversation of
• 3:19
  does a fine dining dinner need to be 10/12/15 courses?
• 3:23
  And I made the argument that it doesn't.
• 3:25
  I don't think anyone's going to go to a tasting menu and say,
• 3:28
  well, it was 8 courses. It would have been better if it
• 3:30
  was 9. If it's delicious, it's
• 3:32
  delicious. If the experience is there, I
• 3:34
  think people could leave with one of the best dining
• 3:37
  experience they've ever had and not complain that it was not
• 3:41
  enough food. If anything, I think a lot of
• 3:43
  times it's too much food. We started looking at
• 3:46
  restaurants like 11 Madison Park, where now they have two
• 3:49
  options for tasting menus, 1 where you can get out of the
• 3:51
  dining room much quicker. And I think a lot of restaurants
• 3:53
  are going to start to adopt that mentality.
• 3:56
  I think you could really give someone a great dining
• 3:58
  experience and not have to not have to overfeed them to the
• 4:01
  point where when they're leaving the restaurant, they don't feel
• 4:04
  good because they ate way too much.
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  There's the law of diminishing returns.
• 4:07
  Will that also applies to maybe giving them too much food?
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  I know I've been to tasting menu restaurants where I remember
• 4:14
  like five of the courses of the 20.
• 4:16
  And I think as we move forward and we need to look at a new
• 4:19
  economic model, we're looking at the way that we're staffing our
• 4:22
  kitchens. So you have to be more efficient
• 4:24
  to work with what you got. Not only that, but it makes a
• 4:27
  lot more sense financially to not have to do 20 courses when
• 4:31
  you could do 5:00 to 10:00. And I even think 10 is probably
• 4:35
  pushing it. I think you're going to see a
• 4:37
  lot of restaurants going to about 7 courses Max.
• 4:40
  I think you could have just as good of a dining experience with
• 4:43
  seven courses as you could have with 13 or 14 or whatever,
• 4:47
  right? You get the point.
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  I think it's going to be all about the execution and the
• 4:51
  technique, but from a labor model and from a food cost
• 4:54
  model, to me, it just makes a little bit more sense.
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  So I think you're going to see a lot of restaurants that are in
• 4:58
  the fine dining world start to rethink that model and say, how
• 5:02
  do we make it work with what we got?
• 5:04
  Do we really need to do that many courses?
• 5:06
  So I'm going to think about, I think you're going to see
• 5:09
  another rise of Asian cuisine all over again.
• 5:13
  And I think the one that's going to be leading the charge is
• 5:15
  Filipino cuisine. I know where I live in Austin,
• 5:18
  we have a great Filipino restaurant with Oco chef Paul
• 5:22
  Key, Top Chef winner Harold Villa Rosa.
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  They have a great team and they're really bringing Filipino
• 5:28
  food to the forefront, New flavors, new ingredients.
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  I think Filipino cuisine is going to have a moment not just
• 5:34
  in Austin, TX where I'm at, but I think in other cities like New
• 5:37
  York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, I could see this
• 5:41
  Filipino style cuisine start to emerge and introduce people to
• 5:45
  new flavors. It's time has come.
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  I also think that you're going to see Southeast Asian cuisine
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  like Vietnamese and Thai food, even though it's been popular
• 5:54
  before, I think it's going to make another resurgence.
• 5:56
  I'll tell you what, when Jean George was the man back, he's
• 5:59
  still the man. Back in the day when Jean George
• 6:01
  was the man and he was fusing Thai food with his French
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  cooking techniques, it was mind blowing.
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  You know, he had lemongrass and kaffir lime and everything, and
• 6:10
  the flavors were so unique. And there was a moment where
• 6:12
  everyone wanted to be like Jean George and introduce French
• 6:16
  techniques with Thai influence. I could see that coming back.
• 6:19
  I think Thai food will have a resurgence.
• 6:21
  It's so delicious For me. Thai food is one of my favorite
• 6:24
  cuisines out there. I could eat it every day and I
• 6:27
  cook it a lot. So I can see Thai food making a
• 6:30
  big comeback in a way that maybe is unfamiliar to the way it was
• 6:33
  in the past. A modern twist on Thai food,
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  Vietnamese food, bringing those flavors back to the forefront,
• 6:40
  the sweet, sour, salty, spicy, hot, and introducing a new
• 6:46
  generation of cooks to these flavors that maybe they didn't
• 6:49
  have the opportunity to cook fully.
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  The next one I think is going to make a big splash this year is
• 6:54
  going to be Korean. I think Korean flavors are back
• 6:58
  there and you're going to see gojujang everywhere, different
• 7:01
  dishes. What's the TV show on Netflix
• 7:03
  that just came out? Culinary Class Wars, right?
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  When you put out a show on Netflix called Culinary Class
• 7:11
  Wars and everyone's talking about it and everyone's really
• 7:15
  immersed in Korean cuisine for a moment, you got Squid Games and
• 7:19
  other things, you're going to see an emergence of that
• 7:21
  cuisine. You're going to see people get
• 7:22
  really into this. Right now, you can see those
• 7:24
  flavors come out, whether it's Korean restaurants or if it's
• 7:29
  people infusing those flavors into the restaurants that
• 7:31
  they're already doing. The next thing I see coming up
• 7:34
  is more recognition of diverse types of cuisine.
• 7:37
  So we recently had the Michelin Awards in Texas for the first
• 7:41
  time ever. Barbecue restaurants got one
• 7:44
  star and several categories. There's a lot of big gourmands
• 7:46
  giving out to some BBQ restaurants in Texas.
• 7:48
  Shout out to all those guys. If you want to go back and
• 7:51
  listen to the episode I did with Matthew Peters, Paul Key, Evan
• 7:54
  Leroy, and Rico Torres where we talk about the Texas Michelin
• 7:56
  Awards, go listen to that because it's really interesting
• 8:00
  to see the Michelin Guide getting outside of what is their
• 8:04
  typical comfort zone of just fine dining.
• 8:07
  And now you get a Taco shop in Mexico, some BBQ restaurants in
• 8:11
  Texas. I think you're going to see a
• 8:13
  lot of diverse cuisine being recognized by the Michelin
• 8:17
  Guide. And as Michelin expands and
• 8:20
  World's Fifty Best expands, another thing that I think
• 8:22
  you're going to see is you're going to see this competition
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  among chefs, right? So a lot of people got a bib, a
• 8:26
  lot of people got one star where Michelin may have seen
• 8:30
  inaccessible to a lot of people in the United States for years.
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  Everyone wanted a Michelin * but it was like if you didn't live
• 8:36
  in San Francisco or New York or Chicago, you weren't going to
• 8:39
  get one. Well, now you have Colorado,
• 8:43
  Atlanta, TX, Florida as the guide continues to expand.
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  A lot of chefs out there, their dreams are coming true and a lot
• 8:52
  of them have dreamt of proving that they're A1 star chef, A2
• 8:56
  star chef, a three star chef. So I think in a lot of these
• 8:59
  markets in the US, you're going to see the competition Rev up.
• 9:03
  A lot of people got one star. You're going to see a lot of
• 9:05
  chefs who's getting 2, right? Who's going to be the first one
• 9:08
  to get 3 outside of some of these other places, right?
• 9:11
  Outside of New York and DC or wherever, right?
• 9:15
  I think you're going to see some of that competition come up.
• 9:17
  But also trying to do it in a way that's authentic to, to
• 9:20
  that. Because now they're looking at
• 9:21
  it and saying, OK, if we're going to give it to places that
• 9:23
  give Texas BBQ, then it's truly about the food.
• 9:26
  So they're going to be able to push on the food side in a way
• 9:30
  that's unique and authentic to them and tell the story of where
• 9:34
  they're at and who they are. So I can see the competition
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  heating up a little bit where people no longer have to cook
• 9:40
  inside the box of whatever those guidelines were to get in
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  Michelin star. I think it's really opened it up
• 9:46
  to a lot more chefs. Same thing with James Herd.
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  James Herd was kind of the first ones before Michelin to start
• 9:52
  recognizing a diverse set of cuisine outside of what was
• 9:57
  traditional. This gives a lot of hope to a
• 9:59
  lot of chefs. So that's my next prediction.
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  My next prediction is going to be functional ingredients with
• 10:04
  health purposes. You know, mushrooms like lion's
• 10:07
  mane. I saw someone, I don't remember
• 10:09
  where I saw it, but someone made a lion's mane, katsu sando,
• 10:14
  someone else did a lion's mane like Schnitzel.
• 10:17
  So a lot of these adaptogens like ashwagandha, lion's mane,
• 10:21
  whatever, I see that coming into the forefront.
• 10:23
  CMOS for nutrition, a lot of Wellness focused ingredients are
• 10:29
  going to come to the forefront. Health is a hot topic right now
• 10:33
  and everyone, especially right now at the beginning of the
• 10:35
  year, everyone wants to get healthier.
• 10:36
  People are learning to cook with these healthy ingredients.
• 10:38
  You know, before people didn't want to cook healthy food
• 10:41
  usually because it meant that I can't use my cream, I can't use
• 10:44
  my butter, whatever the case may be, They looked at healthy food
• 10:47
  is not delicious. Well, I think that paradigm
• 10:49
  shift is changing and people are realizing that healthy food is
• 10:53
  delicious. Functional foods being a
• 10:55
  lifestyle choice right now, I think it's going to be a very,
• 10:58
  very hot topic going into the year.
• 11:01
  The next one is an old trend, but I think it's going to come
• 11:03
  back in a bigger way. It's going to be sustainability
• 11:05
  and knowing your sources now, I know this is something that
• 11:08
  we've we've done and we've maybe done to the point where people
• 11:13
  it's on autopilot, but I see it being a selling point for
• 11:16
  restaurants in the coming year because a lot of people were
• 11:20
  saying they were sustainable and have these good practices, but a
• 11:23
  lot of them didn't do it. A lot of people like, Oh yeah,
• 11:24
  we buy local, but we know you weren't buying local.
• 11:28
  Come on, don't lie to us. If like that meme I put up the
• 11:31
  other day, I was like, does it sound better if I say locally
• 11:35
  sourced or sustainable and the other person like you're buying
• 11:38
  it from Cisco? There's some truth in that.
• 11:40
  A lot of people say they're doing sustainable locally
• 11:42
  sourced, but they're not. But I really think there's going
• 11:44
  to be some pressure because now that people have seen the wizard
• 11:47
  behind the curtain, those people that are truly doing it are
• 11:50
  going to get the recognition for it.
• 11:52
  So I'm not sure how to call it. Maybe I'll just call it honest
• 11:56
  sustainable, meaning they're not lying.
• 11:59
  Now, we talked about functional ingredients like adaptogens, but
• 12:02
  I think there's also going to be a movement towards healthy fats
• 12:06
  and health conscious ingredients.
• 12:09
  I mean, you just got to spend 5 minutes on Twitter or X to find
• 12:13
  out that you can't eat seed oils anymore, right?
• 12:16
  Like the seed oil mafia will come after you.
• 12:18
  So I think there's going to be a lot of pressure on restaurants
• 12:21
  to say that they're seed oil free.
• 12:23
  This can be the new thing, right?
• 12:25
  Remember for a while I was like, oh, we don't have any trans
• 12:27
  fats. We use only hormone free meat.
• 12:30
  Whatever the buzzword is right now, it's going to be seed oil
• 12:32
  free. People are going to go to
• 12:34
  different alternative fats like tallow, duck fat, ghee, butter,
• 12:40
  avocado oil, coconut oil, whatever it is.
• 12:42
  They're going to be really considering the type of fat that
• 12:44
  they're cooking with. And I, I see, I, I see tallow
• 12:46
  making a huge comeback. You know, tallow is making a
• 12:48
  comeback. I think it's going to be huge
• 12:50
  this year. If you're a chef and you're
• 12:52
  listening to this, if they're not already asking you now in
• 12:54
  your restaurant, be prepared for the servers to come back to you
• 12:58
  and say the guest wants to know what kind of oil you use to cook
• 13:01
  the French fries at. Does it have any seed oils?
• 13:05
  They're allergic to seed oils, right?
• 13:07
  Be prepared. So if you want to get ahead of
• 13:10
  it, start thinking about alternative healthy fats.
• 13:12
  I promise you, I don't even know if this is a meat prediction.
• 13:15
  It's like it's coming. Get ready.
• 13:18
  The next one I want to talk about is employee health and
• 13:21
  Wellness. I think if you want to stand out
• 13:24
  as a restaurant or a culinary operation, a lot of people
• 13:28
  aren't just looking at the money anymore.
• 13:30
  It's about what else do you offer me?
• 13:32
  And, and the truth is, I don't think people want to work for
• 13:34
  assholes anymore. I think I, I think those days
• 13:36
  are done. There's still some of those
• 13:38
  chefs out there, but I think in general, most people don't want
• 13:42
  to work for those people anymore.
• 13:43
  I think it's much more transparent.
• 13:45
  People are screaming. They've been screaming about it
• 13:47
  for the last several years. They don't want to be treated
• 13:50
  this way. They want more money.
• 13:51
  They want fair wages. So if you're an employer, you
• 13:54
  need to think about how are you going to be competitive not just
• 13:57
  with your wages, but with your whole culinary culture, the
• 14:00
  environment in which they work, what their schedules are looking
• 14:03
  like. You know, the cooks coming in
• 14:04
  now, they want more predictability with their
• 14:07
  schedule. They want more time off.
• 14:08
  They want to take a vacation. They don't want to miss every
• 14:12
  significant event in their life, right?
• 14:15
  A lot of us older chefs missed all that and we've been
• 14:18
  screaming and complaining about it, wearing it like a badge of
• 14:21
  honor, like, well, I missed all these events, so you got to miss
• 14:24
  it too. And they're saying no, no, no,
• 14:26
  no. If you hated it, what makes you
• 14:27
  think I'm not going to hate it too?
• 14:29
  Give me a chance. So employers that have those
• 14:32
  benefits for employees and prioritizing the well-being of
• 14:36
  the employee, maybe that's a gym membership, whatever that looks
• 14:38
  like, I think that's going to give you a competitive advantage
• 14:42
  in the market, right? The next thing I see is more
• 14:45
  efficient business models. There's a lot more podcasts.
• 14:49
  There's a lot more resources out there.
• 14:50
  Not just this one. I mean there's this podcast
• 14:53
  everywhere. There's too, there's too many
• 14:54
  podcasts for chefs. You don't need a list to all of
• 14:57
  them. It's like a couple, right?
• 14:58
  This one for sure. But there's a lot of resources
• 15:01
  out there for chefs to get information now.
• 15:03
  And with that information comes efficiency.
• 15:06
  How are you going to streamline your operation?
• 15:09
  I talked about AI last year. I'm sure a lot of you have
• 15:11
  figured out how to incorporate AI into your day-to-day.
• 15:15
  AI is only getting better, and I'm assuming everyone is also
• 15:19
  getting better at using it. You're figuring out what its
• 15:21
  capabilities are. I'm late at night having
• 15:24
  conversations because you could talk to your ChatGPT now and it
• 15:28
  talks back. I'm having late night
• 15:29
  conversations about, you know, are we living in the simulation
• 15:33
  ChatGPT and it's a story for another day.
• 15:35
  We digress. But what I'm saying is it's
• 15:39
  here. There's robots coming in.
• 15:41
  You know, Chipotle is introducing guacamole bots.
• 15:44
  I read that there's more kiosks to order.
• 15:47
  As there's a labor shortage, you're going to start to see
• 15:50
  more efficiencies put in place, right?
• 15:53
  And the labor that's in the kitchen.
• 15:55
  I think people are going to want talent on their team, so they're
• 15:58
  going to have to retain that talent.
• 15:59
  So they're going to pay more. I think it's going to get really
• 16:02
  competitive here pretty soon with wages.
• 16:06
  Everyone's going to want to hold on to their talent.
• 16:08
  Menus are going to get smaller. Kitchens are going to become
• 16:10
  more efficient. I think the business model is
• 16:13
  going to tighten up a little bit.
• 16:14
  You don't need 50 items on your menu anymore.
• 16:17
  I think post pandemic, a lot of operators got smart and they
• 16:21
  said, hey, we need to tighten up and really do what we do well.
• 16:25
  And we don't need to do that many items on the menu that we
• 16:27
  do. OK, right.
• 16:28
  There's going to be a lot more focus on that, on being fiscally
• 16:32
  responsible, good stewards of the business.
• 16:35
  My last prediction is going to be where does the next superstar
• 16:38
  chef come from? Where's the next Gordon Ramsay?
• 16:41
  Where's the next Bourdain? I think the traditional route of
• 16:45
  going on TV on the Food Network and competing on Guys, Grocery
• 16:47
  Games or whatever, I think those are done.
• 16:50
  I don't think anyone is going on any of these reality shows,
• 16:53
  these cooking competitions and coming out of Superstar that way
• 16:55
  they did 5-10 years ago. I think the next Gordon Ramsay
• 17:00
  isn't going to be coming out of Hell's Kitchen.
• 17:02
  It's going to be coming out of social media.
• 17:04
  There's a lot of bright chefs out there on social media that
• 17:07
  have the ability to make a name for themselves.
• 17:09
  I mean, look at Fancy Chef 2013. That guy came out of nowhere and
• 17:14
  next thing you know he's on Tom Segura.
• 17:16
  I saw him go from like 13,000 followers to 100,000 followers
• 17:20
  on Instagram in a few months. The next big name chef is going
• 17:24
  to come out of TikTok or Instagram or YouTube.
• 17:27
  And there's already some really big name chefs that are coming
• 17:30
  out of YouTube. And what's really interesting
• 17:32
  about that whole thing is it's the it's not being forced upon
• 17:36
  you, which is is very different from the way it was before.
• 17:39
  A lot of times the next celebrity chef was, we were
• 17:43
  being told to the next celebrity chef was and now like you got
• 17:47
  way more possibilities than you ever had, right?
• 17:50
  There's a lot of really talented chefs out there.
• 17:53
  Now, with that being said, I think if this if this is the
• 17:57
  lane that you want to go down, I think it's really important that
• 18:00
  you remember you still have to be able to cook.
• 18:02
  Just acting silly on the camera for views isn't necessarily
• 18:06
  going to get you to be the next Gordon Ramsay.
• 18:09
  Gordon can cook like don't forget that Bobby Flake and
• 18:12
  cook. These guys know how to cook.
• 18:14
  So I think whoever that next chef is, I think you're going to
• 18:16
  have to have a little bit of personality.
• 18:18
  You're going to have to have something to say and you're
• 18:20
  going to have to know how to hold a knife and cook in a pan.
• 18:24
  What did I forget? Let me know in the comments.
• 18:28
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• 18:30
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• 18:33
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  Go to chefspsa.com. Get a book, treat yourself.
• 18:39
  You deserve it. Get Chef Brains if you want
• 18:42
  exclusive episodes and early access before everyone else.
• 18:46
  Before your friends are telling you what they heard on Chef's
• 18:48
  PSA, become a premium member on Spotify and Substack.
• 18:51
  We'll be back next week. Hit the porno music no?
• 18:54
  Small Andre in the kitchen music drop the chef knowledge No
• 18:58
  fiction stirring up the BT enough the session Listen close
• 19:03
  classes in session.