Avo-toast is dead... these are 2018's biggest food trends

Faster pasta

A Sophia Lorenesque pasta lust has London a-twirl. We are rejecting chain chicken alfredo splatted on overcooked penne for fresh dough made on marble counters metres away, tossed briefly in boiling water before taking a dip in a pan of seasonal ingredient-led sauce — see the never-diminishing queue for Padella. And now the new wave of faster pasta places — Passo, Pastaio, Flour and Grape, The Cheese Wheel — is serving this up for less than a tenner. Pasta is the ultimate comfort food anvegand it’s also cheaper than burgers and chips. No organic rare-breed meat hung for a decade putting zeros on menus here, simply a wad of flour, boiled in water, slathered, most likely, in dairy.

Reclaim the Coconut

Coconuts have been ruined by the #cleaneaters of this world, frying everything and anything in air freshener-scented Vaseline until the mere smell of a Bounty makes you queasy. It’s time to reclaim the coconut. The coconut cream pies (above) at Jacob the Angel are things of utter beauty: the thinnest crisp pastry, topped with marshmallow fluffy coconut cream and finished with a baked Alaska-style meringue. And also a great Christmas pud for raisin detractors.

yes you African

Gastro-geography lesson for 2018: swot up on your African food. If the past few years have left us well-versed in bao, now’s the time to learn your potjies from your bobotie. Besides the much raved over Ikoyi and Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, there’s the soon to open Kudu in Peckham, from Amy Corbin, scion of the Corbin & King restaurant dynasty, specialising in South African food and featuring kudu bread topped with lardon butter, lamb rump cooked on the braai with smoked yoghurt and Boerewors sausage at breakfast. Prefer a liquid diet? South Africa’s new wave Cinsault and Chenin Blanc (right) are the wino’s choice for 2018 sloshing.

Vegan gets vibey

Underspiced bean mush, raw, spiky kale and nut ‘cheeses’ which taste of clay — veganism doesn’t typically scream fun! Or yum! Until now. Because vegan junk food is here: all the comforting, carb-heavy, taste bud-pummelling flavour hit, none of the cheese or meat that typically makes junk food so addictive. See Gizzi Erskine’s Pure Filth, currently popping up at Tate Modern, or pie and mash from Young Vegans in Camden and Temple of Seitan’s fried wheat protein ‘chicken’. Wildflower has just opened in the new Peckham Levels with swede fondue and pretzels, and cult New York import, By Chloe, will soon be serving quinoa hash browns, barbecue portobello burgers and seitan tacos. This is vegan food that doesn’t come with a pious lecture — you don’t have to give up meat altogether, simply stick something plant-based in your face occasionally, without it seeming like penance.

Barrafina 2.0

Fingers on the reservation button, people: early January sees the opening of the highly anticipated Sabor (‘flavour’ en Español, dontcha know), a Spanish restaurant from Nieves Barragán Mohacho. Why should you care? This is her first restaurant since she left Barrafina, the Michelin-starred, no-reservation tapas restaurant that has queues snaking from its doors at 10pm on Monday nights for tortilla, croquetas and deep-fried lamb brains. Sabor sounds equally lush: a downstairs dining counter with food from the Basque country and Galicia (wild rabbit empanadilla? Yes, please) and an upstairs restaurant focusing on octopus and suckling pig. Most importantly? You can BOOK. A brave new 2018 world indeed.

Rye-ding High

Sod sourdough — 2018 is high on rye, thanks to the imminent opening of ex-Murano head chef Pip Lacey’s Hicce in spring, a British-Scandi-Japanese restaurant where rye bread will be made in-house. Then there’s Ekte Nordic Kitchen opening in Bloomberg Arcade, serving super Scandi open sandwich smørrebrød topped with dill salmon and mustard-marinated herring; and the ever brilliant Snaps + Rye with its oh-so-cute mini smørrebrød canapés. A great gateway bread for the purportedly gluten-free who just don’t like the wheat-bloat.

The new con-fusion

There’s a new breed of outré cultural food collisions that you’d only normally find on a cruise liner buffet heading our way next year. That means baby beetroot jerky with green cardamom cream, and pork hock with sprout sambal and lime-beer mustard at Chinese-Indian-Irish-Balinese-influenced Scully, from former Ottolenghi chef Ramael Scully (right) in early 2018. There are also Neil Rankin’s mad Korean haggis tacos at Temper City and coucou sabzi (a Persian omelette) rubbing alongside Mont d’Or Vacherin at French-Persian newbie, The Drunken Butler.

Get that pét-nat

Out on the wine with some devastatingly hip young things in Stokey? Order the pét-nat, aka pétillant-naturel, the rather adorably nicknamed natural sparkling wine made in the ‘méthode ancestrale’. Pét-nats are bottled before alcoholic fermentation has finished, meaning there’s little control over the finished product, so two bottles nominally containing the same thing might be different. As with orange, biodynamic and Beaujolais Nouveau, this is a bit of a rep thing — showing off your hip penchant for the funky over the fusty old-school stuff — but, cloudy and rustic and, at around 10% abv, ever so gluggable, they’re more fun than champagne and less basic than Prosecco. Knock ’em back at Hill & Szrok, Sager + Wilde and Passione Vino.

go Down under

Antipodean food isn’t all barbecues, Vegemite and, er, witchetty grubs. Australian cuisine has insidiously infiltrated London over the past few years. Your perfect flat white, avo on toast, freakshakes… all the most Instagrammable trends of recent years were picked up from the land of Oz. This year sees Australians take credit for their gastronomic work, announcing their London influence loudly. See Alexis Noble’s modern Australian restaurant, Wander (below), where beef carpaccio comes with watermelon and jalapeño nuoc cham (save room for fairy bread, a brilliantly trashy ‘cake’ of white bread, buttered and topped with sprinkles, here luxed-up into brioche scrolls). Antipodea in Richmond focuses on globalised Australia — so, yes, Turkish poached eggs with ‘hung’ yoghurt, but with Vegemite on tap. And the ever so lovely brunch spot Daisy Green has just opened its eighth location, Darcie & May, with Aussie lamb barbecue cutlets and the full Bondi breakfast.

hail Hk-lon

Ah, dim sum, how we do love thee, the perfect combination of soothing carb, spice and protein steamed to lushness, cure of the grossest hangovers, oh so social media friendly — and, thanks to the huge migration of lauded Hong Kong restaurants to London, actually of bloody good quality. So where to get your fix? First up is Duddell’s, a slick, Hakkasan-glossy import from Hong Kong, newly opened in the lovely St Thomas Church with all the colourful dim sum and stickily lush Peking duck you can wrap your chopsticks around. Then there’s xiao long bao specialists, Din Tai Fung, much mooned over in Hong Kong by travelling foodies and opening its first branch in London next year. And, if you can’t wait, John Li, who founded the magnificent street food stand Dumpling Shack after returning from Hong Kong, has now expanded to serving sublime dan dan noodles and wonton soup alongside the famous shengjianbao in Spitalfields.

Alternative fats

Butter — creamy, salted butter plastered an inch thick on fresh bread — is delicious. But it is bloody expensive thanks both to a global shortage and the fact that it’s more economical for UK dairy producers to export butter to Europe, rather than sell it within the UK, because of the weak pound. So, make friends with other fats. At Coal Rooms in Peckham, dairy is replaced wherever possible with the rendered animal fat left from all the butchery done on site — that means housemade smalec (a Polish pork lard spread) gives meaty, oily lushness to bubble and squeak, while mayonnaise for roast potatoes is made with beef fat and mushrooms come fried in bone marrow. This is nose-to-tail eating taken to its big fat conclusion, and it’s delicious.

The new espresso Martini

Firstly, an espresso Martini is not a Martini, it’s a vodka espresso, served in a Martini glass. Secondly, there are far more interesting caffeinated cocktails you should be knocking back in the name of energised inebriation. Get your Duracell on at Boki in Seven Dials, where they make their own espresso liqueur in-house for pepping up Boki hot toddies and infuse both Campari and gin with coffee for negronis and ultra-pepped-up G&Ts. Want a spice kick to properly blast through last night’s boozing? Try a turbo gin and tonic with your kimchi toastie at Soho pop-up, Kultured: a mix of gin, espresso and black pepper tonic. Woosh.

Pubs - Part Two

If the first wave of gastropubs taught us that lager taps and heirloom beetroot aren’t incompatible, the next wave is about bringing back the booze-driven iniquity that the blonde wood, toddler-centric, brunch-serving gastropub often lacks. Starting with The Blue Posts, a 275-year-old pub in Soho now in the hands of Zoe and Layo Paskin, owners of legendary Nineties nightclub The End and Middle Eastern restaurants The Barbary and The Palomar (where dancing on tabletops is actively encouraged). The pub has been beautifully restored on the ground floor, with a Barbary-style 11-seater restaurant downstairs and what will be Soho’s most dangerously fun cocktail bar of 2018 upstairs. Dry January what? Less lash-heavy, more lovely local, are the new Coach Makers Arms in Marylebone; Henry Harris (he of Racine fame) cooking at Coach & Horses in Clerkenwell, The Three Cranes in the City and the much-missed Truscott Arms, set to re-open under a different name; and ex-St John chef Sean Marsh taking over the food at Brompton’s The Hour Glass (hello, Aylesbury duck with dripping carrots).