New Top Food Trends #4: American Food is Now Ethnic

Give us your tired, your weary, your masses huddling around the great American melting pot and adding their food culture ingredients to the kettle. Today's flavors come from the combination of our diverse heritage and is defining the new American cuisine. Our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world, thank you very much, and they brought with them their food. Sure, it's still just like mom used to make, only now we've added a little of this and a little of that to create a new flavor.

No longer will the US be known only for the hamburger, as fine and delicious as that can be, but for a new kind of food – oh, call it International Fusion, if you want – that features a little of each of us as we represent the countries from which we came. As new flavors, styles of preparation, and American know-how shift into high gear in 2010, we'll see that American food is now ethnic.

"We could see a cross cultural revolution in food, both in our homes and in the restaurants we choose to patronize".

Heck, you can't even call it “ethnic” anymore – not in the traditional sense – so we'll redefine that too. We go out for Thai as much as we go out for pizza, or maybe it's Japanese tonight, or Brazilian, or African, and ethnic restaurants might start to offer fare from other countries as well. We could see a cross cultural revolution in food, both in our homes and in the restaurants we choose to patronize.

Mexican pizza may start to look more like...well...pizza, and Italian joints just might serve you tacos. There are already Mexican joints popping up that serve strictly burgers. It's as though the entire country has become a National food court.

It's not just restaurants that will be having all the fun. We'll be stirring the pot at home too. Grandma's recipes will have a rebirth thanks to our new cooking knowledge, ingredients, and spices, and they'll become original again. We'll be pairing foods on the same plate in new ways too, and all this experimentation will create a new American cuisine.

It is indicative of this trend that Artie Sequeira (Arti's Party) was the winner in The Next Food Network Star. Combining Indian ingredients and foods with the foods and spices of other cultures, she was not only the favorite among the shows producers, but millions of television viewers. People sense and desire this new American food, this combination of cultures, even if they never thought of it consciously before. Cooking in our own kitchens with multi-cultural foods and ingredients will become part of our lives, providing us with relaxation and a sense of accomplishment. American food is now ethnic.

(These top food trends came from a research project by The Food Network, International Food Futurists, and Culture Waves.)