Sponsored By
New on the Menu

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

New on the menu: Fried French pickles and collard greens falafel

Plus spicy mussels, high-end mac & cheese, and sangria with CBD

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

March 3, 2023

5 Slides
New on the Menu.jpg

Brooklyn, N.Y., chef and restaurateur Greg Baxtrom is the star of Vanderbilt Avenue, one of the most trend-forward streets in the very trend-forward borough. He recently rechristened his Maison Yaki (which his handlers say is in the process of being relocated), as Petite Patate, named for his dog Spud (the restaurant’s name is French for “little potato”). There he’s continuing his playful nature with an appetizer that combines French and American sensibilities by taking little French pickles, or cornichons, and breading and deep-frying them.

Bin Lu, executive chef of The Restaurant at Blue Rock in Washington, Va., is also playful with the “Mac and Cheese” that is part of the restaurant’s four-course tasting menu. It’s ziti that’s stuffed with a purée of truffled celery root and then buried in Grana Padano cheese.

Fun is also the name of the game at Cut 132 in Columbus, Ohio., where sangria is made even more mellow with a CBD gummy, and at Parlour Victoria in Washington, D.C., the newest restaurant of the burgeoning Atlas Restaurant Group, chef Brandon Sumblin gives Belgian moules-frites a kick with chile flake and coppa ham.

And at Blue Jay Bistro in Littleton, N.C., chef Ashleigh Fleming takes her grandmother’s collard greens down a road less traveled by making them into falafel.

Related:New on the Menu: Invasive venison and Jonathon Sawyer’s sweet potatoes

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

Subscribe to Our Newsletters
Get the latest breaking news in the industry, analysis, research, recipes, consumer trends, the latest products and more.

You May Also Like