Eat This Space

Think food is different to fashion? Think again as we scope out 2011's gastronomic trends, from super supper clubs and foraged fodder, to Twittered tucker and Nordic nosh.

What's on the menu in 2011? Gemma Elwin- Harris takes a look at this year's top food and dining trends across Europe – from seeking out the best street food on Twitter to fashionable Parisian butter! Illustrations by Ross Murray

These days, fashions in food change as fast as catwalk styles. One minute slow-roasted pork belly is on all the best menus, the next it's about as cool as last season's harem pants – though goat belly is said to be the next big thing. The question is, what will we be eating in 2011 and where will we be eating it?

The good news is that the recession is making eating out cheaper and more democratic, and great-value flights help foodies to travel more and more! Expensive, whitetablecloth restaurants are losing out to hip new "grazing" bars; and underground supper clubs continue to open all over Europe, offering better value and better opportunities as the trend spreads beyond London and Paris to cities with low rents such as Berlin.

Meanwhile, if the US craze for "food trucks" is anything to go by, we'll see more gourmet street food vendors following the likes of chefs Mark Jankel and Jun Tanaka, whose Airstream-based Street Kitchen was a hit in London recently. So if you want to know more about how Europe's food scene will be shaping up in 2011, then read on.

TREND 1

THE RISE AND RISE OF SUPPER CLUBS

Underground supper clubs – restaurants usually run by amateur chefs out of their own homes – bred like fruit flies in London last year. This year, we'll see them spreading further throughout Europe. And, as new venues open, the established supper clubs are evolving and innovating too. If you're the owner of an already successful supper club, you may be looking to…

1. Expand and move up in the world like Hidden Kitchen in Paris, which upped sticks to larger, swankier premises to cope with demand.

2. Go semi-pro, by getting an agent and a book deal like the enterprising Ms Marmite Lover of The Underground Restaurant in London. She's also running farmers' markets and a foodie version of BBC TV show Dragons' Den, all from her living room.

3. Take your supper club on tour, like the three friends behind Berlin's The Shy Chef are planning to do next summer. "Many people who come to our dinners want to host something themselves," says Costa of The Shy Chef. "So far we've had invitations to do our supper club in Prague, Amsterdam and Sydney."

BERLIN: 2011'S SUPPER CLUB CENTRAL

One online group, http://supperclubfangroup. ning.com, gives a good indication of where supper club numbers are rising. London is surely reaching saturation with a whopping 67, the Berlin scene is just starting to simmer at seven, Paris has four links, while other cities like Edinburgh, Lisbon and Granada are showing early signs of interest with one or two supper clubs each.

Costa says: "I'm getting calls all the time from people who want to start their own supper club and need advice. The trend is definitely taking off [in Berlin] at the moment."

Why is this good news for foodies? "Compared with London, Berlin has the big plus that it's a really cheap city," he says. "So for The Shy Chef we've been able to rent these amazing venues at low prices – like the flat in Kreuzberg that Quentin Tarantino lived in when he was shooting Inglourious Basterds. And we don't have to charge that much for the dinners, either. I've heard of London supper clubs charging £120 for a five-course menu – but we charge around half that at €65 for five courses."

For a supper club that invites professional guest chefs to cook, including Brad Pitt's private chef, that's a bit of a bargain.

TREND 2

THE DEATH OF FINE DINING

"In Paris, the most talked-about tables are no longer the grandest," says Sophie Dening, author of the upcoming Hg2 guide Eat Paris. "A trend for 'bistronomic' cooking emerged in the city a few years ago, when a handful of talented young chefs threw out the rule book and opened very un-starchy dining rooms, serving more natural, more interesting food. Ze Kitchen Galerie and Yam'tcha innovate with Asian flavours; Le Chateaubriand and Frenchie are mobbed for their modern, light cuisine."

Alexander Lobrano, author of Hungry for Paris and The New York Times' Eurofile column, defines this updated bistro cooking as "contemporary cuisine de terroir, dishes made with the best quality, often pedigree and organic produce".

"This is what you find at hip, new restaurants like Saturne and new-wave wine bars like the very popular Le Verre Volé," he says. He adds that French chefs no longer reign supreme on the city's restaurant scene. "The Paris food world has become more international and interesting than ever. The chefs at three of the city's hottest restaurants are all foreign-born: American chef Daniel Rose at Spring, Swedish chef Petter Nilsson at La Gazzetta and Italian chef Giovanni Passerini at Rino."

In London, this more informal dining scene is all about sharing tiny, tiny plates, at restaurants like Polpo, Bocca di Lupo and Caravan. Fleur Britten, author of the new Hg2 London guide, talks of the death of fine dining in the capital. "The economic downturn hasn't stemmed the flow of new restaurants, but it has radically changed their philosophy. Perhaps the very epitome of the new mood, Polpo mixes New York's egalitarian walk-in culture with Venice's friendly tapas-style sharing plates – all at honest, good-value prices."

TREND 3

CULT INGREDIENTS – EVEN THE BUTTER

It's now commonplace for restaurants to name certain producers on their menus, from cattle farmers to growers of salad leaves. So it follows that certain products are gaining a cachet, even down to those makers of humble bread and butter.

Lobrano says: "Bordier butter – which is made by Jean-Yves Bordier in Saint- Malo, France – has become a cult product that shows up on many menus. Ditto meat from star Paris butcher Hugo Desnoyer, bread from baker Eric Kayser, vegetables grown by Joël Thiébault on his farm in the Yvelines départment just 12km outside Paris, charcuterie from Basque producer Eric Ospital and so on. These pedigrees have become bona fide gourmet passwords in Paris and are seen on menus all over the city."

TREND 4

TWITTERING ABOUT STREET FOOD

The trend for gourmet street food continues to build. In the US, 2010 saw gourmet food trucks give recession-pressed restaurants a run for their money from New York to San Francisco. Many great food trends start Stateside, and Europe is sure to follow suit. International restaurant consultant Baum + Whiteman's forecast for 2011 says that food truck "rodeos" are starting to catch on in the US, where a dozen or more vendors turn an empty field or parking lot into a food fair on wheels.

"Food trucks have big competitive advantages: low investment, no rent, no air conditioning, no utilities hook-ups, no real estate taxes, no dining rooms or waitstaff, no reservationists, and marketing costs reduced to Twitter and an iPhone," it says.

Popular food trucks using Twitter and Facebook to message fans with their location have reported a flash-mob effect. Trendspotters predict it's only a matter of time before you can track your favourite food cart's GPS coordinates on your iPhone. What else? "Look for more restaurant operators and bigname chefs supplementing their businesses by chasing after customers with their own trucks," says Baum + Whiteman.

Signs that the gourmet street food trend is on a roll in Europe: 2010 saw the first British Street Food Awards (www.britishstreetfood.co.uk). Finalists included a pink VW van that served cupcakes, and a Vietnamese street-café tricycle.

TREND 5

NEW NORDIC CUISINE

Last year, Copenhagen restaurant Noma was voted San Pellegrino Best Restaurant in the World, throwing the spotlight on chef René Redzepi and "New Nordic" cuisine. Redzepi uses cutting-edge techniques and is something of a terroir purist, concentrating on Scandinavian ingredients such as "sky" (a yogurt/cheese recipe similar to fromage blanc), cloudberries and musk ox. In Sweden, top chef Mathias Dahlgren works with a similar philosophy.

Other inventive Scando chefs include Thorsten Schmidt of Malling & Schmidt, Aarhus, Denmark; John Kofod Pedersen of Sortebro Kro, Funen, Denmark; and Magnus Nilsson of Fäviken, Järpen, Sweden.

TREND 6

FORAGED FOODS ON TOP MENUS

Europe's most exciting young chefs are making good use of the wild produce around them. "Foraging is really becoming a big trend for high-end restaurants," says Danish TV chef Trine Hahnemann. "Copenhagen restaurants like Noma and Fiskebaren are leading the way, and I expect the trend to carry on growing. Partly because getting out in nature is soul food and therapy for stressed-out urban people. It's a great way to explore the terroir of your home."

Famous French chef-botanist Marc Veyrat has reopened his Lake Annecy restaurant, as La Nouvelle Maison de Marc Veyrat. It's located in a stunning area north-west of Grenoble near the Swiss border. Elsewhere, Italian chef-of-themoment Pier Giorgio Parini, aka the "king of herbs", uses more than 50 herbs at the newly Michelin-starred auberge Povero Diavolo, in Torriana, near Rimini. Many of them, such as anise, wood sorrel, wild fennel and dill, are picked in the surrounding hills.

In Scotland, Tom Kitchin champions wild food at his two Edinburgh restaurants, using foraged ingredients, from seaweed to girolles and ceps. Sea buckthorn berries are on the dessert menu come autumn. They taste rather like passion fruit and come cooked in a posset.

TREND 7

DEEP FRIED LOCUST ANYONE?

Could sautéed locusts or garlic-fried waxworms be the next big thing? Over on this side of the pond, we're waiting to see if New Yorker Marc Dennis is onto something with his "bug dinners": insect-eating soirees held in his Brooklyn loft. A passionate "entomophagist" (insect eater), Dennis believes that insects are the food of the future: plentiful, sustainable and nutritious.

He's got a point, too – 80% of the world's nations already eat insects as part of their diet, but Westerners have tended to be somewhat squeamish. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is taking research on entomophagy seriously as world food shortages loom. Watch this space!