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The return of dairy
The Grubhub platform delved into the depths of the internet to decode the latent food trends of 2023. In its search, it found that last year saw the big comeback of dairy in coffee drinks, with a 20% increase.
In this respect, whole milk climbed to the top of the shelf among the top three dairy orders, followed by 2% milk, and chocolate milk.
Girls Dinner
If there was one macro-trend in the female key that online girls brought to the table last year, it was the ‘Girls Dinner‘ phenomenon, with over 30 million views on TikTok.
These trendy dishes in the platform’s culinary imaginary consisted of interpretations of no-cook meals built around still lifes of everyday, often chaotic, snack foods such as cheese, bread, fruit and charcuterie; as a reductionist version of the classic charcuterie board, eliminating planning, preparation and cooking time.
From the many interpretations of the trend, some emerged as a decadent combination of a whole can of sardines, a handful of popcorn, gummy peach rings, and cheese slices on a plate. Of course, in these creations the stylisation of the dish had to take precedence over the rest, because after all, it is still a product projected on the internet.
Barbiecore
Gastronomy also wanted to pay tribute to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie universe, the audiovisual trend that caused worldwide fervour, and of which there have been countless culinary versions: from the pink ‘Pasta Barbie’ to fast food chains such as Burger King that rushed to offer their own odes to Barbie.
Italian minced snacks
Sandwiches were transformed, reinterpreted and even deconstructed in 2023 through other formats such as the sandwich or the chopped sandwich, which had 19.1 billion views on TikTok last year.
The TikTok archive was thus filled with content of users chopping lettuce, red onion, meat, pickles, cheese and other ingredients that made up their own ‘avant-garde snacks’.
The pickle boom
From the ‘Picklegate’ conspiracy to the pickle-centric aesthetic trend. Pickles were also part of last year’s viral narrative, like ‘pumpkin spice’, which generated obsession on TikTok, which promoted pickles, whose Google search has shot up 3,800% since the beginning of 2023.
From pickle jumpers to chickles to pickle beer, the hashtags #pickle and #pickles on TikTok reached more than 9.6 billion views. Not to mention the self-described ‘guilty pleasure’ trend of pickles wrapped in fried cheese.
A liquid ode to the Martini
Whether you’re a fan of Kris Jenner or not, it’s a known fact that the celebrity has somehow made martinis a bit of a statement this year. In 2023, martinis experienced their uniqueness by becoming anything you could want: dirty pasta martini, squid martini, breakfast martini and even a campfire martini.
A break for diet coke or diet light
Delivery platform Grubhub recorded a 17% increase in Diet Coke orders in US offices, as an uptick also derived from the #dietcokebreak trend on TikTok, with more than 43 million views.
Generation Z and Millennials flocked to the trend to ‘romanticise the little things’ and showcase their afternoons away from work for an afternoon Diet Coke break.
Seemingly Ranch’ and the power of Taylor Swift
In late September, a Taylor Swift fan’s tweet about liking chicken with some condiments took the internet by storm, giving rise to the ‘apparently ranch’ craze, which saw big brands such as Heinz join the viral trend.
The ‘swiftie’ version of the ketchup and ‘seemingly ranch’ sauce was produced in an exclusive way that is diluted from that viral post that Heinz took advantage of to materialise into a sauce.
