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New on the Menu

Articles on new and innovative food and beverage items trending across the independent restaurant landscape

New on the menu: Asian-Cajun seafood and a cocktail called Barbenheimer

Plus kaiseki vegetables, a French-Asian savory custard, and a dessert interpretation of a Vietnamese fish curry

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

January 19, 2024

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For decades, East Asians and Southeast Asians have had a growing impact on the culinary culture of southern Louisiana, where the marshy weather, seafood-based cuisine, and penchant for robust flavors are welcome draws for the relative newcomers. It’s that happy confluence that has given rise to restaurant concepts like Gao’s BBQ, which actually was founded in Dallas and now also has locations in New York, Illinois, and California. One of its specialties is snow crab served in a numbing and spicy sauce.

A couple of weeks ago we saw Angelo Sosa offer a savory dish inspired by a Thai dessert. This week we have a similar tactic at the recently reopened Moon Rabbit in Washington, D.C., where pastry chef Susan Bae takes the flavors of a Vietnamese fish curry and turns it into a fancy and sweet sponge cake.

Speaking of new openings, Hakubai, which had long been a popular kaiseki restaurant in New York City’s Kitano Hotel, closed several years ago and has reopened under new management with new chefs who are offering seasonal Japanese vegetables as part of their current tasting menu.

In West Hollywood, Calif., at the new French restaurant Amour executive chef Dani Chavez Bello makes use of Japanese flavors and techniques for dishes such as his chawanmushi, an egg custard that he augments with sea urchin, trout roe, and truffles.

That approach makes even more sense given the fact that Bello worked under David Bouley.

And at Mora Italian in Phoenix, the Barbenheimer phenomenon lives on with a cocktail meant to evoke both films.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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