Here's What You'll Be Eating and Drinking in 2025 (We Think)

Dear Pros,

You've got Kat this week, climbing out from under an avalanche of food and beverage trend reports to the blinding dawn of what may be a really weird year, dining and drinking-wise. Then again, there is often mild bafflement in the unfamiliar, as I was reminded last night in the wee small hours when a fit of insomnia sent me to my happy place, the Food & Wine archives.

Our "What's Hot for 1985" grocery list included a parenthetical "(really!)" after a mention of now-ubiquitous blue potatoes; explanatory text alongside tomatillos, lemongrass, and orzo; and borderline gushed over the existence of peppers that aren't simply red or green. What was perhaps nouveau at the time — the cultural culinary fusion and open kitchens of Jeremiah Tower's nuclear-hot Stars restaurant, or the brand-new inclusion of Italian in the CIA's core curriculum — has become the norm, or at least part of the mise en place with which chefs, bartenders, and home cooks can play.

A trend has to start somewhere, possibly even decades or centuries in the past. The beverage portion of the 1985 feature touted a return to classic cocktails ("Remember the Martini and the Manhattan, the Sour, the Stinger and the Sloe Gin Fizz? Ah, that downright glamorous concoction, the cocktail. We suspect it's coming back.") as well as a surge in nonalcoholic beers and healthy sodas, all of which F&W has clocked within the past few months. Beef tallow — the all-purpose skincare cure-all/cooking fat clogging up my Discover feed — is smeared all over the virtual pages of the 14th and 18th-century cookbooks I was also sleeplessly skimming. And I'm gonna note with pleasure that the magazine's predictions of Indian and Mexican restaurant ascendance in America has become a fact, millennia into those cuisines' existence.

This is all to say that while accurate trend predictions are never guaranteed (sea beans and pizzoccheri are still waiting for their moment in the sun, and sadly, the Hot Witch Summer of the Strega Sour has yet to happen, as often as I try to conjure it), it's plenty of fun to ponder. I hope you'll take a moment to read my colleagues' and my 2025 food and beverage predictions (will magic mushrooms and beef bone cocoa still be all the rage in 2045?), Regan Stevens' roundup of what chefs think is coming next in restaurants (looking good for turnips, tahini, and early-bird specials), and Tim Newcomb's sneak peek at the flavor that's going to be everywhere in 2025 (no spoilers, just click).

Happy 2025, Pros. I'll catch you at the diner. (Also a trend.)

Kat