{"id":25644,"date":"2018-01-18T12:01:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T17:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-gordon-food-service-canada.pantheonsite.io\/ideas\/tracking-canadian-flavour-trends-a-street-level-tour\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T11:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T15:52:10","slug":"tracking-canadian-flavour-trends-a-street-level-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gfs.ca\/en-ca\/ideas\/tracking-canadian-flavour-trends-a-street-level-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking Canadian Flavour Trends: A Street-Level Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>We took to the streets of Toronto to see what menu trends are bubbling to the top and how you can make them work for your restaurant.<\/h2>\n<p>The Gordon Food Service&nbsp;culinary team conducted an intensive trend-tracking tour, visiting Toronto hot spots over the course of three days in June. The goal was to unearth menu-ready ideas that are translatable across foodservice segments and to gather rich insights into the evolution of flavour trends. \u201cIt\u2019s a great thing for our customers because we can see firsthand what\u2019s working, connecting today\u2019s trends to real business opportunities and sharing those takeaways with restaurant operators across Canada,\u201d &nbsp;says Stephane Renaud, Corporate Chef, Gordon Food Service, Quebec City.<\/p>\n<p>The team visited 34 restaurants, extensively sampling the menus and connecting with the staff, gaining valuable insights into both dining preferences and flavour trends. Toronto was chosen because it\u2019s a global village with a vibrant restaurant scene. It also has a high concentration of immigrants, who positively impact the food culture. Through this unique street-level research, three menu opportunities bubbled to the surface: veg-centricity, global mashups and authentic Asian cuisine.<\/p>\n<h3>Veg-Centric: a major opportunity<\/h3>\n<p>Chefs are showing <a href=\"\/en-ca\/ideas\/three-veg-centric-opportunities\">a lot of love to vegetables<\/a>, moving them out of side dishes and into centre of the plate. That love is shown through cooking techniques, like roasting, charring and grilling, as well as high-impact finishes, like pancetta, beef broth and cheese. \u201cThis is a huge opportunity for operators,\u201d says Chef Jason Kalinowski, Foodservice Adviser, Gordon Food Service, Milton, Ontario. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a huge push in modern vegetable cookery, highlighted by protein finishes, like root vegetables braised in bone broth.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This trend, which promises significant impact on menus for years to come, is not strictly vegetarian. Chefs are using ingredients like prosciutto, dashi and crispy chicken skin to amp up the umami. They\u2019re also using ingredients like cheese and miso to pump up flavour. \u201cThe restaurants we visited were presenting vegetables in a unique way that\u2019s both vibrant in flavour and colour,\u201d Renaud says. \u201cIt\u2019s making vegetables exciting to the customer, moving vegetables into bar snacks, shareables and centre of the plate.\u201d Hanmoto, a Japanese izakaya, serves Sizzling Enoki with miso butter, amplifying its meaty profile. At El Local Loco, a modern Mexican restaurant, zucchini fritters are craveable, thanks to a strategic use of adobo mayo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Additional menu sightings<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dahi Puri: Crispy puris served with a potato and lentil stuffing, topped with yogurt and various chutneys\u2014Bombay Street Food<\/li>\n<li>Beet Salad: Roasted beets, arugula, whipped goat cheese, fried shallots, honey vinaigrette\u2014Three Hands<\/li>\n<li>Grabong: Freshly shredded buttercup squash fritters lightly coated in red curry paste batter, deep-fried, served with sweet garlic-tamarind dip\u2014Pai<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Mashups mark modern menus&nbsp;<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"\/en-ca\/idea-centre\/culinary-ideas\/global-mashups-add-creative-menu-flair\">Global mashup dishes<\/a> serve up big opportunity. They resonate with today\u2019s diners by offering adventure tethered to the familiar. The opportunity for the operator is to take the best of both worlds. \u201cThere are now no barriers in flavour exploration,\u201d Renaud says. Chefs can pick and choose from global pantries, adding intriguing flavour to familiar items like pasta, pizza, sandwiches and more.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Toronto tour chefs saw all sorts of ethnic influences on traditionally North American dishes. \u201cThey\u2019re being executed at a high level\u2014crucial in today\u2019s very competitive restaurant landscape,\u201d Kalinowski notes. One example was from The Wilcox, a gastropub. They menu a Kimchi Croquette, taking a traditionally European item and infusing Asian flavours with kimchi, XO sauce, pickled ginger, yellowfin tuna and smoked a\u00efoli. Another example is the Peking Duck Pizza at Levetto, a fast-casual Italian concept. The pizza sees Peking duck, green onion and a mozzarella-cheddar blend, then it\u2019s finished with pickled cucumber and crispy duck skin. \u201cReally flavourful and unique take on pizza,\u201d he says. Opportunity here lies in mindful menu builds, highlighting global flavours in familiar forms and making everything work in harmony.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Additional menu sightings<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Korean Lasagna: Fried wonton sheets, pulled pork, kimchi\u2014Wilcox Gastropub<\/li>\n<li>Nashville Hot Sweetbreads\u2014The Black Hoof<\/li>\n<li>Kimchi Beef Sushi Wrap: Beef, green lettuce, carrot, kimchi, kidney bean, avocado, asparagus, raspberry BBQ sauce\u2014Rolltation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Authentic Asian narrows in<\/h3>\n<p>Diners have been <a href=\"\/en-ca\/ideas\/asian-flavours-on-menus\">embracing Asian flavours<\/a> for a number of years now, reaching from Vietnam and the Philippines to Thailand, Malaysia and Japan. But today\u2019s trend sees a move away from pan-Asian into more specific regions, like Szechuan Chinese or Northern Thai. Toronto, with amazing multicultural restaurants and pockets of authentic eateries, provided fertile ground in discovering new menu opportunities. \u201cBeyond the global-mashup trend, there\u2019s opportunity to explore authenticity through regionality. Specifically, authentic Asian cuisine was a through line during our trends tour in Toronto,\u201d says David Evans, Corporate Chef, Gordon Food Service, Ontario. \u201cWe found inspiration and ideas in everything from a Japanese izakaya to a Filipino menu.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At Tinuno, an authentic Filipino restaurant, the team ordered the Kamayan feast, a family-style meal with items like grilled pork, shrimp and calamari, garlic fried rice, mango salad, eggplant and okra. \u201cThey laid down banana leaf across the table, then spooned the food, family style, onto the leaf, no silverware, no plates. It was a wonderful, social experience,\u201d he says. Although replication outside of an authentic ethnic restaurant would appear out of place, authentic touches can help deliver a memorable experience. \u201cYou could place a banana leaf on a plate when serving a Filipino-inspired dish, and help deliver some of what makes authentic foods so wonderful to discover,\u201d Evans says. Similarly, izakayas, or Japanese pubs, offer opportunity for menu distinction. \u201cJapanese food here used to mean sushi, but now you can go to a Japanese pub and find craveable, familiar bar bites and fried items,\u201d he says. Those dishes can translate seamlessly onto modern Canadian menus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Additional menu sightings<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Japanese Chicken Poppers (Kara-age): Japanese style fried chicken with wasabi mayo\u2014Nom\u00e9 Izakaya<\/li>\n<li>Okonomiyaki: Crispy Japanese pancake\u2014Guu Izakaya<\/li>\n<li>Chicken Satay: Grilled curry marinated chicken skewers with peanut sauce and a Thai style cucumber dressing\u2014Pai<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We took to the streets of Toronto to see what menu trends are bubbling to the top and how you can make them work for your restaurant. The Gordon Food Service&nbsp;culinary team conducted an intensive trend-tracking tour, visiting Toronto hot spots over the course of three days in June. The goal was to unearth menu-ready [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":26940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,68,123,112,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catering-small-business","category-culinary-ideas","category-hotels-hospitality","category-restaurant-bars","category-running-your-business"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.9 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tracking Canadian Flavour Trends: A Street-Level Tour | Gordon Food Service<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/gfs.ca\/en-ca\/ideas\/tracking-canadian-flavour-trends-a-street-level-tour\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tracking Canadian Flavour Trends: A Street-Level Tour\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We took to the streets of Toronto to see what menu trends are bubbling to the top and how you can make them work for your restaurant. 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