Six Food trends we don’t want on our plates in 2026

By Anoothi Vishal

We did a snap poll as 2025 waned on the restaurant dining trends we’d rather lose with last year and TFTA readers and foodphiles called out everything from small plates and tasting menus to truffle oil and picante! Here’s adding to the list of pet peeves that we hope restaurants and diners shrug off in the new year.

1. “Art” for Art’s Sake: In an era, where craft is more important than brand and Gen Z is questioning the language on luxury where everything is deemed art (but may have been crafted in a sweatshop, as we saw with some of the world’s most reputed fashion brands), it is meticulous craft that must start defining a good dish, not self-proclaimed and hyperbolic proclamations of “artistic vision” and “artistic reinterpretation”. Faux fried egg, chocolate rocks, or dosa destroyed is not art. It is just form—theatrical, pointless more often than not. If art is being aspired to, let it be via a way of looking at the world, and food. But then that plated must be palatable too.
2. Cultural appropriation: Many people don’t believe in cultural appropriation of food. But then, they don’t think deeply enough or historically enough. If curry is a colonial appropriation, so is a lot of what is floating around in the name of reinterpreted or inspired by regional food. Whether it is the Lucknowi qorma that no connoisseur from the city will condone or the “Himalayan” thukpa by another name unrecognisable by the local community, creating food using regional ingredients, with a vague nod to local tastes and worse names for non-local consumers who want to eat a culture without immersion, rigour or nuance is appropriation.
3. “Experience”: Yes, we know it is the “experience economy”. But a little less forced novelty and story-telling, a little more rigour and “authenticity” (no, we don’t mean recipes, but truthfulness and pertinence of the concept) will make it more wholesome. Drastic course correction: Getting the basics right, not the spectacle is overdue in the Indian restaurant-scape.
4. Small (but big on social) stardom: Stories of bootstrapped restaurants that start small and become immensely popular have a compelling charm and fuel a zillion restaurateuring dreams. Some, do get organic or smartly-generated social media attention that propels a good product to cult status. But with the covid years of small enterprise behind us, the question to ask must be, how do 20-seater restaurants in expensive locations ever become profitable? Or, are they just vanity enterprises with an entire marketing machinery working overtime to establish them as avant garde—while these are being subsidised by sister brands? Don’t penalise financially prudent businesses in favour of needy social stardom.
5. Overpriced celebrity: Who exactly is paying Rs 40-50 k per meal? Why? And is it even a good meal? As many many celebrity chefs from overseas stream in to cater to India, the emerging marketplace of the world for luxury, watch you spend, particularly if you are not in the top 1 per cent of high earners. Aspirational middle class must prize fiscal responsibility, never mind the sponsors!
6.  Faux luxury foods: So, you know Beluga. But do you know Kaluga? That’s the caviar from a Chinese farm, now responsible for 50-60 per cent of supplies globally.  Sturgeon eggs have been deemed a luxury since the 19^th century when elite Europeans and then Americans started a fashion for caviar (and all its attendant rituals of eating—via a mother of pearl or gold spoon onto the fist et al), sourced from the Caspian sea. Overfishing of wild sturgeon led to a ban in Europe in the 1980s on fishing, and eventually to an export ban on most wild caviar by 2006. Aquaculture came up to supply this precious commodity, dominated hitherto by the Europeans and Americans—but now Chinese aqua farms, subsidised by the Chinese government, have taken over global production. And Kaluga Queen, a farm, is the world’s biggest producer. Because of the subsidies and availability in bulk, caviar prices have fallen the world over. According to the Financial Times, Chinese caviar is being repackaged and sold as French, Italian and other brands too. What’s more, FT reports that Chinese enterprise is now looking at other foods such as smoked salmon, Wagyu beef and truffles too, as their government incentivises this business. Traditional notions of provenance-led luxury foods have been turned on their head. So, the next time, a restaurant tries to upsell you the image of traditional “luxury”, question the hierarchy of ingredients. It’s no longer about pricey commodities deemed tasteful.