Top food and drink trends from 2016
As 2016 comes to a close, it is easy to want to look back and reminiscence over the last 365 days.
Or maybe not.
The year brought many triumphs and setbacks, highs and lows, for the entire country.
A new era of Star Wars ushered in, Kayne West acknowledged a mental breakdown and Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar. It was a year full of cat videos, mannequin challenges and news feeds flooded with food photos.
Although popular trends like matcha tea and rainbow bagels didn't quite make a splash on Delmarva, the Shore embraced more plant-based meals, the nitro coffee craze, smoothie bowls and more.
Kombucha
Situated among the top food and drink trends for 2016 was kombucha, a powerful fermented black tea full of amino acids, probiotics, B Vitamins and electrolytes.
According to Kombucha Brewers International, the market increased 30 percent two years ago, and it hasn't stopped since. Experts say the fizzy drink is good for joint health, digestion and natural energy, which probably helped it continue to jump off the shelves in 2016. Not to mention, earlier in the year, PepsiCo purchased kombucha maker KeVita for approximately $200 million.
Now, nearly every health food store on Delmarva, like Good Earth Market and Ocean City Organics, as well as major grocery stores like Walmart and Weis, carry several brands.
Lori Beinhauer, manager at Good Earth Market in Rehoboth Beach, said more than 80 percent of her customers are purchasing kombucha regularly.
"People are asking for it, more than ever before," she said, adding the store offers Real Raw Organics, a locally brewed line and GT'S Kombucha, the first commercially made in the United States. "Kombucha became very popular, very quickly."
Logan Wiley, the only brewer on Delmarva and owner of Real Raw Organics, opened her kombucha cafe and health-food storefront in December 2015, after seeing the craze explode in Florida and other major cities.
“Kombucha was sold on tap and was for sale in every gas station," she said. "I was surrounded by health, and it was contagious. I wanted to bring it back home."
Acai bowls
In addition to a variety of kombucha flavors, Real Raw Organics offers acai bowls, another popular food trend that gained traction on Delmarva this year.
Acai bowls look like ice cream smoothies, almost taste like ice cream and make you feel good about your breakfast choice. The berry contains less sugar than most other fruits, and has one of the highest antioxidant levels of all fruits and vegetables, Wiley said.
Aside from the health benefits acai brings to the table — it may help prevent arthritis, inflammation, obesity and allergies — it tastes delicious, like a cross between chocolate and a mix of blackberries, blueberries and strawberries.
The colorful bowls are basically a thick smoothie, versatile, healthy and sweet, topped with anything from granola, honey and almond butter to bananas, kiwi and coconut flakes.
Thanks to social media, Instagram in particular, the intricately decorated bowls exploded onto the foodie scene in 2016. There are now nearly 800,000 posts featuring the #acai hashtag.
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In addition to Real Raw Organics, Delmarva residents can order an acai bowl at Juice Shack by Berlin Organics and Greenhouse Cafe in Ocean City, Dreamer Juice and Twist Juice Bar in Rehoboth Beach, Juice Box in Ocean View and Nectar in Lewes.
Many restaurants that offer breakfast or Sunday brunch, such as Barn 34 in Ocean City, have also added acai to the menu.
Coconut
Coconut seems to be riding the superfood bandwagon and also the anti-dairy one.
"It has a lot of versatility," said Skip Moore, manager of Ocean City Organics. "We are seeing it not only as coconut water and beverages, but for innovation with chips, crackers, spreads, oils, vinegars, flour and coffee creamer.
Moore said his customers use coconut milk in curry stew, panna cotta and gluten-free; vegan coconut truffles and coconut water for fruit Popsicles. That said, he finds "people either love this versatile fruit or hate it. It’s much like cilantro in the catering world."
Nitro cold brew
Those noshing on Delmarva might have noticed another trend from 2016.
Baristas took cold-brew coffee — coffee brewed in cold or room-temperature water — and infused it with nitrogen gas.
The process makes coffee smooth and creamy without the cream, and it takes some of the bitterness away so you need less sweetener. Plus, there's no need for ice since it is already cold. It's served out of a tap, and cascades into the cup like a Guinness.
The hip, trendy take on coffee, made appearances on many menus this year — including nearly 3,000 Starbucks stores around the country.
Local shops like Rise Up in Salisbury, The Daily Brew Coffeehouse in Snow Hill, On What Grounds in Berlin and Drifting Grounds in Bethany Beach, now offer the chilly, caffeinated drink as well, although many only have it available during the summer and fall.
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Kim Kneipp, manager of The Point Coffee Shop & Bakery in Rehoboth Beach, said the shop debuted nitro cold brew late 2015, and it has been, "extremely popular this year."
Kneipp and executive coffee roaster, Sean Hixon, want to offer it year-round, but there currently isn’t enough space for the equipment. An upcoming remolding project aims to change that.
Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free
Some trends, like cold brew and kombucha, stumbled recently onto the scene, while other trends solidified their footing in 2016.
Beinhauer noticed once-popular fad diets, like paleo and green smoothie cleanses, burned out while gluten-free and plant-based diets soared.
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"Vegetables were the hero this year," she said. "They became the center of the plate, not simply a side dish."
The gluten-free diet started as a medical necessity for the 7 percent of people in the U.S. who either suffer from celiac disease — an autoimmune disorder — or a diagnosed gluten intolerance. For them, the protein found in wheat, rye and barley wreaks havoc on their intestines.
But now, the diet has become a bona fide fad among those who’ve never suffered from eating a slice of wheat toast.
A 2013 poll by consumer analysts NPD showed that 30 percent of all adults were trying to cut down or avoid gluten completely. Packaged Facts, a market research group, forecasts that the gluten-free food market will grow from $973 million in sales in 2014 to $2.3 billion by 2019.
Despite its limitations, the vegan lifestyle also surged in popularity in 2016, and not just on Delmarva.
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Celebrities publicly forswearing all animal products from their diets, include Bill Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres, Carrie Underwood, former NFL football player Tony Gonzalez, Natalie Portman and former professional boxer Mike Tyson.
Vegan-centric books flew off the shelves, schools around the country began instituting meatless Mondays and vegan food trucks gave barbecue mobile eateries a run for their money, said Patricia Haddock, the president and co-founder of the Rehoboth Beach Vegfest.
The annual festival, held each June at Epworth United Methodist Church in Rehoboth Beach, had its biggest turnout this year, with more than 30 vendors and nearly 1,000 attendees.
"Delmarva is embracing the plant-based movement that has been sweeping the country for the last few years," she said. "It's exhilarating."
Sour beers
Made for centuries in Belgium, sour beers have only recently gained popularity stateside and are changing the beer game on Delmarva. As demand increases, brewers like Jason Hearn from Tall Tales Brewery, plan to offer more in 2017.
"We will be building a separate facility dedicated solely to sours," he said, adding the new building will eliminate the risk of cross-contaminating other beer batches. "You gotta be careful brewing sours."
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Sour beers are brews that have been given a funky flavor during fermentation by the introduction of bacteria and wild yeasts. The beers aren't always sour, however, and are often called American Wild Ales in recognition of the fact that the flavor range of these beers are expansive — from dry and hay-like to tart and fruity.
Breweries already doing them on the Shore include 3rd Wave Brewing Co. in Delmar and Burley Oak in Berlin, who recently began hosting an annual sour festival to highlight them all. Like Tall Tales, RAR Brewing in Cambridge plans to soon build a separate facility dedicated solely to the funky brews.
Locally sourced
The National Restaurant Association recently released its annual report on the year's most prominent menu trends, for which it surveyed 1,600 chefs across the country.
Nabbing the number-one spot is locally sourced proteins; 44 percent of the chefs surveyed picked local sourcing as the food trend that's grown the most over the past decade.
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If your local steakhouse or burger joint do not already tout the provenance of their beef, they surely will soon — and expect more restaurants to sprout rooftop or backyard gardens, too: locally grown produce is the number three trend for 2016, with "hyper-local" sourcing clocking in at number four.
"The country, in a sense, is going back to its roots," said Tony Lanuza, who co-founded The Brooklyn Baking Barons with his partner Chris Poeschl. "And that is a trend I do not see fading any time soon."
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