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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: Tuscan lamb chops and maitake ramen

Plus a spicy herbaceous cocktail, pasta with porter sausage, and a Cuban-American interpretation of a Thai dessert

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

December 15, 2023

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Scottadito is Italian for a finger burn, and it’s also the name of a dish of lamb on the bone that is apparently so delicious that people burn their fingers in their eagerness to pick it up and eat it. An interpretation of that is now on the menu at Alta Strada in Fairfax, Va.

Arroz con Mango, is Cuban slang for a mess, but of course it literally means “rice with mango,” which is, in fact, a delicious combination when in the hands of Thai cooks, who serve very ripe mango at the height of its season (March to May) with sticky rice cooked with sweetened coconut milk. Carlos Hidalgo, chef of La Cumbancha – which is itself an Afro-Cuban term for a fun music-filled gathering — makes his own version of the Thai dish, using three different forms of coconut milk reminiscent of the sweet Latin American combination of tres leches. It’s all a big multicultural festival in one dessert.

In New York City. at the new Ketchy Shuby is SoHo, maitake mushrooms take center stage and are served in a dashi-like broth with ramen, and at Deschutes Brewery’s Portland Public House in Portland, Ore., the brewery’s own porter is used to make a sausage that’s served over ravioli. 

Finally, in San Francisco, the new Movida Lounge offers a savory, vegetal, and spicy mezcal cocktail with dill, bay leaves, carrot juice, and more.

 

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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