FOOD WORLD STARS



Bobby Flay and Mario Batali will go toe to toe with new burger chains. Bobby’s will feature chili fries, guava shakes, jalapeno ketchup and life-size cutouts of Bobby at the grill. Mario’s will offer spleen burgers, gorgonzola-salumi melts and deep-fried polenta cubes in a paper cone made from a map of Friuli. Daniel Boulud’s solo Bowery Burger will include a slab of foie gras and shards of dark chocolate on toasted brioche with apricot chutney and optional béarnaise sauce for his American fries.

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Alain Ducasse will ink a deal to put his name on upscale non-perishable “Survivor" foods to be sold only at Saks Fifth Avenue, with Vuitton totes containing wind-up flashlights, portable radios, dehydrated Fiji water and a wallet with a combination lock for holding a stash of Euros.

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Jeffrey Chodorow and Frank Bruni will have a food fight in Madison Square Park televised by the Food Network. If Bruni loses he will be required to review restaurants in Des Moines for six months. If Chodorow is the loser he will be forbidden to open a new restaurant for three weeks.

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Anthony Bourdain will be challenged by a handful of amateur x-treme eaters, with the loser sentenced to actually cook at Les Halles for a month.

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From the thousands of children addicted to the Food Network will emerge a prepubescent prodigy whose cooking skills are so amazing, Jeffrey Chodorow will back his restaurant in the space where Wild Salmon failed. There will be no special menus for adults.

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NEW YORK DINING TRENDS

Restaurants with dead-of-night-in-the-forest lighting and being menus with miniscule lime green type must supply headlamps to all senior citizens.

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To prepare for an evening of dining out, coaches will escort you to a Times Square subway station at rush hour where you will attempt to have a conversation. You will be quizzed on the content.

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Restaurants that feature pounding music must, by law, text message menu specials. Aging Luddites who do not have cell phones will get loaners.

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Waiters will present a written resume and a list of their favorite dishes to preclude annoying and unprofessional chitchat which they might otherwise indulge in. These documents may be ignored. Waiters may sit down at the table in an empty chair only if invited.

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All smugglers of illegal immigrants will be required to teach at least one word of English for survival, “Enjoy." Those who arrive legally must learn this at the airport before going through customs.

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Each restaurant will be allowed one “enjoy" per table per evening. Violators will be pelted with stale bread and inferior focaccia.

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Restaurants will staff roving dining “tutors" to stop by each table with a five minute “Tabletalk" on the provenance of each ingredient on the menu. Before ordering, you will be quizzed on the content.

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Conceptual Dining will become the rage. The pleasure derived from the dish is found in its description alone. The dish, in fact, does not exist. A small fee will be charged.

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Small Plates will give way to no plates, a trend for even healthier portion control. All food will be served on oak leaves, in clam shells or onto your outstretched palm.

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The Beijing Olympics will inspire new food fads: Like candied love apples on a stick, haw berry shakes. And egg fu yung on a burger roll.

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NEW PRODUCTS

Wine makers will dose their generic table wine with immunity boosters, smart herbs and attach a siphon for sipping while biking. The trend will henceforth be known as “imbiking."

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A breed of black-footed pigs from the southwest of France, fed strictly on foie gras, custom made charcuterie and pork belly from lesser pigs will be marketed each with its own identification number and tag with a picture of the pig farmer’s daughter.

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A major rival to the black-footed pigs of southwest France will be the healthier blue-footed pigs raised in Kansas on a diet rich in blueberries, blue potatoes, blue corn chips, bluebell nectar, and other anti-oxidants.

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Boutique chocolate will be labeled with the production date and the chocolatier’s license and cell phone numbers. Chocolate tastings will be widely promoted, as well as the usual What to Drink with Chocolate selected by chocoholics.

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As restaurant consultant Michel Whitemann notes in his annual roundup of trends, wacky ice creams seem to be unstoppable. I have railed against lawn clippings in ice cream for years and as Wiley Dufresne said when I asked if anyone actually liked his foie gras with anchovy and cocoa nibs: “Gael, no one is listening to you." I am forced to predict that mustard sorbet will come in many flavors just like mustard. And bravo to you, if you can eat prune Armagnac ice cream with dried thyme.

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Cocktails can’t possibly get sweeter but they will. How about a carrot cake daiquiri? And pomegranate flavored vodka on the rocks made of smart water? I’ll take a yuzu martini, hold the kumquats please.

copyright pending 2007 by Gael Greene