Bord Bia World Cuisines Market Study Visit – Top Trends & Recommended Places To Eat.

Bord Bia World Cuisines Market Study Visit

What trends have we seen, and how does the Market look for the future of food service?

This Study explores the leading culinary trends, in-depth research from the Food People, Bord Bia’s Thinking House, and UK foodservice expert Simon Stenning, who are all one step ahead in the Culinary World and taking the UK foodservice scene by storm.

This two-day event focused on innovation, blue-sky thinking and tips on how it can lead to ground-breaking ideas to achieve your ambitions.

It is vital to keep up to date in a future full of ever-changing trends and flavours, especially when you are in the food industry.

The Culinary Food Group works closely with Bord Bia, the Irish food Board, which assists us with these ever-changing trends.

They provide us with insights, webinars, and events to ensure we are current and up-to-date with trends.

Our chefs recently attended the Bord Bia World Cuisines Market Study. This two-day event in London focused on world cuisines.

And here is what they had to say:

“This amazing trip focused on Thai / Indian / Israeli / Chinese / Korean / Japanese & Middle Eastern cuisines, as well as many more”.

Day one:

We met Simon Stenning, the founder of Future Food Service. We met at the Seven Dials Market, where we were introduced to many other food technologists and developers from the Irish Food Sector.

Seven Dials Market is a market created by KERB (https://www.kerbfood.com/). KERB is a membership organization of London’s most promising street food traders.

KERB helps food vendors with business courses, menu development, and a designed business mindset to achieve success. The venue is divided into the Banana Warehouse and the Cucumber Alley sectors.

Banana Warehouse consisted of; Shuk, Bar Nana, Truffle, Yaay Yaay, Chai Guys, Bad Boy Pizza Society, Longboys, Bong Bongs, El Pollote, Curry on Naanstop, Yum Bun, Club Mexicana.

Cucumber Alley: Cucumber alley is where beginner vendors have a good presence with many bakeries and desserts. We seen crème brulee crepe cones and Malaysian sweet and savoury buns.

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Some of the incredible dishes that we seen!

The next stop was at the Westfield Shopping Centre. There were three food courts. The first food court focused on quick serve restaurants like McDonald’s, Subway, and Pop Eye’s. These restaurants depended on digital Kiosks, where everything can be ordered through screens, minimising queues.

We stopped at Café Rasa Malaysia ( https://rasa.co.uk/ ). This café was terrific, with an authentic feel, friendly Malaysian staff, and a small kitchen at the back that serves fresh food with unique flavours of Malaysian cuisine.

Westfield had other reasonable food courts and restaurants, but they were not necessarily busy (not all trends work everywhere). The next stop was at Seoul Birds’, where we quickly looked at the menu ( https://seoul-bird.co.uk/ ). This place focused on Korean street food and Korean fried Chicken.

The next stop was at the Arcade in Tottenham Court. The arcade is a food hall. Where you can choose a table to sit at and scan a QR code, selecting multiple dishes from different vendors is possible, giving a restaurant feeling in a food hall. With dishes from Mexa, Viet Populaire, Provisions, Liu Xiaomian, and many others. https://www.arcadefoodhall.com/eat )

Day two: Our chefs had another day to explore topical trends.

We started the day with some pastries and bread from Middle eastern Chestnut Bakery (https://www.chestnutbakery.com/). Bord Bia then delivered two presentations to us on how the UK Foodservice market is developing and the role of World Cuisines.

We had a look at the UK Foodservice market for 2022 and had a look at how the Market has developed since Covid. We looked at current key food trends, which are always good when working in food manufacturing, as well as the main movements and developments in the Market and the changing landscape in 2023.

We then visited Leather Lane Market.

Here are various street vendors with very trendy food and world cuisines. After the street market, we all went to Kingly Court, where we looked at various menus and finished the trip at The Good Egg. https://www.thegoodegg.co.uk .

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Top food places to add to your London Itenerary.

Interesting dishes that our chefs thought stood out: 

  • Karipap – A deep-fried flaky, and crispy pastry filled with a hint of spicy potato, served with sweet and sour dip. 
  • Mee Kari Ipoh (CURRY LAKSA) – Yellow egg noodles served with A unique spicy curry and coconut soup. 
  • NASI LEMAK (SIGNATURE DISH) – A fragrant rice dish with coconut milk served with anchovies, cucumber, peanuts, and boiled egg. Protein choice of Chicken Rendang 
  • Masala Chai (Spiced, aromatic & warming) – flavour notes of cinnamon & cardamom, ending with the warming sensations of cloves, pepper & ginger root.  
  • Kadak Chai (Creamy & Sweet) – Cardamom, cinnamon, and strong black tea, and milk.  
  • Kesar Chai (Sweet & aromatic) – Saffron, rose, and black tea.  
  • Arepa Bun – Fried chicken thigh, guava glazed, habanero mayo, charred corn-slaw.  
  • Arepa Bun – Classica – American cheese, habanero mayo, dill coleslaw, pickles.  
  • Yuka fries – fried Yuka. 

From our chefs travels they said, “There is an interest in exploring different cultures in the foodservice industry while soaking up all of the different flavours and cuisines, there is also a massive surge in digitalisation with consumers now seeing it as the norm”.

“The goal of digitalization in the food industry is to provide greater transparency in its supply chain, improve efficiency and thereby reduce costs, and ultimately enhance overall customer experience.” according to the future of commerce.

The Culinary Food Group loves keeping up with trends, and there’s no better way to do this than getting out and about to explore the different cultures, flavours, and cuisines currently on the Market.