For chef and longtime culinary professor, Daniel Halden, staying on top of the constantly changing trends can keep him on his toes.
As society learns more about food trends, we know one thing for certain – cooking old school is exactly what consumers want.
“Trends funnily enough tend to circle around a bit, kind of like fashion, where we go through a period where something is new, it becomes old and then becomes new again. So, it just so happens we’re in that cycle right now where what is old is new,” said Halden.
Social media has been a leading cause of these food trends. The new trend of everything being made in a store, with organic, local foods is what millennials want to spend their money on. With more demand, however, comes more need for production so these skills need to be taught to the next generation of chefs.
From instant-freezing ice cream to Canadian cuisine getting more and more multicultural, preparing for what’s here to stay or what will be here for only a moment is as tough as sinking your teeth into an overcooked steak.
“It’s hard to know how much effort you need to put into staying with a current trend. We’re always looking at new trends and trying to incorporate them into our program of study. We’re trying to include that in our teachings, but some trends move fairly quickly, and we have to ask ourselves if they are pertinent to the mainstream that we’re teaching?” said Halden.
Teaching students to create a food that will be gone by the time they are out of school would not be beneficial to them. However, teaching them how to keep the history of Canadian food intact, while adjusting to Canadian’s more multicultural tastes is what Halden wants to bring to the table.
“I would certainly hope that we would continue to kind of push our limits, push ourselves out of our culinary comfort zone. To be able to explore more foods and different tastes and flavours from influences that are coming to us and our culture,” said Halden.
Who knows what will really come next, but we know one thing for certain, it will certainly taste good.