Few goods reflect a culture’s welfare, tastes, and very zeitgeist like food. Black-and-white images of hungry Londoners gripping loaves of bread define our perception of England in the mid-1800s. (They gripped Dickens’s, at least.) In times of decadence, spoiled Americans order an appetizer of peas in a pod (that’s what edamame is, right?), argue about peas in guac, and spread the pea-colored stuff that makes the guac, ah-voh-cadohs from Meh-xicoh, on toast.
“Avocado toast is technically just sliced or smashed avocado on top of a piece of toast,” HuffPo says, “but when you take one bite you will quickly realize that it is so much more than that.” We are greater than the sum of our healthy fats, apparently. But not of our capacity to drool at the sight of a culinary shiny spoon. (One not covered in avocado gunk dulling the sheen of the silver, obviously.)
Here are four other foods that hit the big-time in 2017, the same way it was still possible to release a big album the same year as Thriller.
Those thin pretzel crisps in the resealable bags
Holy flour those things are good. I’d never heard of a company called the Snack Factory until this past year, when their products appeared in the deli section of what seemed like every major grocery chain in the United States. But these guys have been around since 1981, according to Bloomberg.
Their thin, crispy pretzels, alternately known as thins or crisps, verge on binge food. The buffalo-wing-spiced ones leave that Dorito-like residue on the fingertips like many of us remember from childhood—but, fitting these health-conscious times, they come with a fraction of the fat, or none of it at all. The dark chocolate-covered crisps are also wonderful, especially out of the freezer. Just not with a sandwich.
Kale salad
It’s like Popeye’s super-food for an era in which his girlfriend was named Coconut Oil.
Even though kale isn’t exactly a 2017 trend, it still beats out other trendy greens like Brussels sprouts because it has become a mainstay of the packaged salad. Experiment: Visit the produce section of a nearby chain grocer and check out the salad mixes. I eat one all the time that includes both kale and raw Brussels sprouts. But only one veggie is the headliner.
Hot chicken
On the other, more enjoyable end of the nutritional content spectrum, we have the new hotness of Nashville chicken. “Hot chicken,” interpreted flavorfully, is a welcome complement to Buffalo wings, which tend to be messier than their cousin from the South. Interpreted as a marketing opportunity, it’s “The Colonel’s latest creation,” says KFC, “featuring a perfect blend of spicy cayenne and smoked paprika.” Spoiler alert: Unless the recipe came straight from Nashville’s own Prince’s, it can’t be “perfect.”
KFC’s hot chicken was a 2016 joint. But read this Eater story from this September on how “now everybody wants a piece.”
Poke bowls
While these Hawaiian creations started taking off last year, they reached cruising altitude in 2017, popping up in population centers everywhere. On a recent work trip to Birmingham, Alabama, I visited a poke shop inside the downtown Pizitz Food Hall. In Atlanta, my friend raves of a spot called Poke Burri—which I maintain is a play on the word “potpourri,” and he maintains I’m an idiot. “It’s pronounced POH-KEH,” he’s said at least a dozen times, which I don’t dispute. The accent’s also on the first syllable in “Italy” and on the second one in “Italian” and I’ve never thrown a HISS-EH fit about it, but whatever.
Poke deserves its popularity: For American minds, it takes the concept of a taco bowl to a 100-level emoji. Or simply combines sashimi with the idea of an on-the-go dish. (Poke, of course, far predates Chipotle and Q’Doba.) It’s made with raw fish and light vegetables and preferably a sweet complement; mango, for example.
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All five of these foods may be forgotten by 2018, of course. There’s always a new craze waiting to take their place. Five early bets are:
Vietnamese food
We’re due. Every year features a foreign cuisine tweaked for American palates and schedules and made famous among hundreds of thousands of busy city-dwellers. Pho is extremely popular in cities where you can find it, and banh mi sandwiches—banh mi refers to the succulent bread—are the savory lunch-style bites this country craves. Some restaurateur with an eye for a franchise is going to figure it out in the next 12 months.
Spinach
It’s more available than kale, it’s better-tasting than kale, it’s more versatile than kale, it’s healthier in some ways than kale, and we’re stupid people for not eating more of it. We’ll realize it in 2018. One trend I bet you see your friends adopt: ordering spinach on sandwiches in place of romaine.
Bananas
These things have gotten a bad rap. But as popular culture turns more to vitamin binges as meals, it won’t turn completely from stuff that at least makes them appetizing. Throwing a banana in a shake full of products from GNC will be the move for urban professionals short on time. (As someone who considers actual food and dining gifts to humanity, I do not speak from personal experience.)
Sweet tater tots
Sweet potatoes made into tater tots! How have America’s boutique burger joints not figured this out?
Mexican street tacos go mainstream
Look. If you don’t order your tacos with onions and cilantro, you have a problem. Get that “mild/medium/corn/and a bit of cheese” business out of my face.
This is me, delivering a motivational talk, to myself, because tacos with onion and cilantro are so preferable to whatever is stuffed with eight pounds of shredded Monterrey Jack and lettuce that I figure one of two things: Chipotle gets with the program and starts offering customers an alternative to those overcooked “fajita vegetables,” or a local joint like District Taco in the nation’s capital will welcome similar joints to the family outside California and the Southwest, where they’ve already done it right for decades, regardless.
