Trend List Season Begins - and a Few Thoughts about Tuna

It's that time again...when every blog, magazine, newspaper, etc gets busy publishing lists of what to expect in the new year. I love this stuff.

Or, rather, I love some of it. Many (most?) of the lists are kind of half-ass, without much that really feels new or fresh. But today, I ran across two food world lists that are pretty solid: this Forbes list of the top food trends of this past year and this Evening Standard list of party food trends out of London.

Both lists are worth a read. People who pay close attention to the food world probably won't be surprised by much on the Forbes list, though it's still a good summary and consistent with a lot of what I saw this year. The Evening Standard list gets specific in a couple ways I really appreciate. Hot shots are trending, for example, rather than just shots.

There's one key crossover of note: poke, the Hawaiian raw tuna dish.

Seeing that on both lists surprised me, mostly because I tend to lump poke in with other raw tuna dishes, so in my mind, it's more passe than fresh. But maybe it's that tuna, in general, is on its way back? It doesn't really fit with what I see around here - which involves more of a focus on creative uses of trash fish - but I'm not sorry to see it, either. I like tuna and I like poke. So there's that.