Menu Talk with Pat and Bret is a collaboration between Restaurant Business senior menu editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality.
Menu Talk: Pat and Bret share the latest food & beverage news, plus an interview with chef Yara Herrera of Hellbender in New York City
This new year, there has been a lot of buzz about how short-lived most people’s commitment to their resolutions are.
Pat and Bret discussed that trend, and the fact that restaurants don’t pile on the better-for-you limited-time offers in early January the way they used to. Instead, they start rolling out later in the month, possibly in anticipation of slimming-down efforts that are renewed in the spring.
But Pat has noticed a lot of new bowls with health halos, often high in protein and low in carbohydrates, and she and Bret agreed that protein is without question the healthful-eating approach of choice these days.
Protein’s even being added to coffee, or more often the foam that goes on top of it, with whey protein and similar ingredients being whisked in.
But there’s a not-remotely-better-for-you trend afoot, too, in the continuing spread of ranch dressing.
Bret recalled Burger King testing an 8-ounce cup of it in select markets late last year, intended for people to dip their burgers in.
And this week Jimmy John’s brought back its spicy Kickin’ Ranch that it removed from the menu around a year ago, to the chagrin of many of their customers, some of whom claimed they loved the sauce so much they would eat it with a spoon. In response, Jimmy John’s introduced a 6-ounce cup of Kickin’ Ranch “soup.”
Taco Bell also recently introduced a spicy ranch, and at an event thrown by Wingstop, which both Pat and Bret attended, they were invited to create their own ranch variations. They were provided with ranch and several ingredients they could add to it, including hot sauce, hot honey powder, and lemon pepper powder, as well as the chain’s new Pacific Glaze.
The glaze was the reason for the party. It’s a complex sauce inspired by three Asian condiments: Sweet chile, hoisin sauce, and gochujang. The result is a fairly hot but also complex sauce that both co-hosts enjoyed.
They rounded out the podcast with an interview Bret conducted with Yara Herrera, chef and partner at Hellbender in the Queens, N.Y., neighborhood of Ridgewood, who discussed the changing role of women chefs, her sourcing strategy, and some of her favorite dishes.
You May Also Like
_Matt_Furman.jpg?width=300&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
