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I was wondering what kinds of flavors you all had seen grow in popularity over time. What was your favorite flavor/ingredient trend? Cookbook releases seem to excel at highlighting the tastes du jour. I see a few patterns. 

My favorites over the last few years: avocado, kale, pumpkin spice, everything bagel type seasoning, and birthday cake flavor (almond sprinkle cake). 

Trends that I disliked : sea salt caramel

Ahahah I love sea salt caramel although in France this has been a staple for years and years (in Brittany + Normandy mostly).. 

My pet peeves are  kale, chia seeds and all this gluten free craze ;)

I love yuzu, tonka, avocado 

Funnily enough salted caramel is one of my favorite new tastes from recent years. Others that I can think of that I cook with/eat a lot more now are halloumi, chilli crisp, chorizo sausage, sumac, and burrata cheese. I do a lot more gluten-free baking now than I ever did because my daughter and a good friend are g-f (both have inflammatory diseases that cutting out gluten helps). I don't have many dislikes but probably cupcakes are top of the list.

What am I seeing as food trends? There is the ground seaweed e.g. sea asparagus being used as a low sodium salt.  But as a trend that may speak to my age. There are the flower tisanes also used as flavourings. There is a fantastic non-jam/Smash (it lacks enough sugar to be labeled a jam) which includes chia and my unadventerous sister looked up the website for on the same day she tasted it.  Dried chilies continue to expand so you can match your chilie to the regional food you are cooking. The fermented veggies has been a trend so long it wouldn't rate a mention except my favorite brand keeps adding new veggies to the list. South American food is trending in the sense that it is becoming easier to find the necessary seasonings; more South Asian home cooking is becoming available as achars and  podis. Shiso is becoming mainstream rather than a special trip item. Hmmm ... maybe the trends I see are Pacific Rim borrowings.

Miso and cheese together, ponzu, chili crunch aka taberu rayu, shiso, grated daikon plain or topped with other flavor boosters, and flavored hot sauces such as garlic flavored tabasco.  These are certainly popular flavor ingredients in Japan now. 

Greens, lots and lots of greens! My co-op has had lots of different kinds, including oddballs like brussel sprout greens. 

I live in the middle of the US, and trends take a long time to get here, so variety in pickled vegetables is relatively new.  Salt/sweet, especially salt on milk chocolate, is quite common and I hate it.  Slightly more kinds of chilis in the local grocery store, although popular vegetables tend to get bred larger and blander.  So we have huge jalepenos with little heat and brussel spouts the size of lemons, almost little cabbages.

Chili crunch has just made its way here and I am delighted.  Daikon is rare and I have yet to see shiso or halloumi in my local grocery. Fortunately, I know where the international grocers are.

Zephy

Shiso grows really well in planters.  You can order from https://kitazawaseed.com..._sid=8ce39c267&_ss=r

I just planted some along with basil and dill.  

For seeing how  grated daikon gets used as dipping sauce or as sauce over steaks, burgers, chicken, tofu etc, you can try this one.  We use this when wanting Japanese flavored sauce for steaks and hamburger steaks rather than regular steak sauces. It is like ponzu with addition of grated daikon.  Also works as dipping sauce for shabu shabu and salad dressing.  https://www.amazon.com/K...ish-Oroshi/dp/B07YQFFRGZ

Here in London I am smiling a little at the idea of Brussels sprout tops (greens) being a trend, here it's what your grandma served (probably boiled to death) with meat and potaoes, though as kale and all things green are trending probably more popular again than it has been

But trends I've noticed:-

• Multi-couloured hairloom tomtoes and squashes (squash and pumpkin not really British staples in the 20th cnetury)


• Korean food and flavours, kimchi especially


• Broccoli rabe / rapini


• A runny fried or poached egg on everything especially avocado toast (not always a good idea for me)


• Kombucha and kefir

Salted caramel is a mainstream ice cream flavour now, one of my favourites.  I live in a neighbourhood that has long had many Cypriot or Turkish shops and cafes so Middle Eastern foods like hlloumi and sumac, and good pita bread are ordinary to me, but I think that's very local and most other Brits, even Londoners, would see them as more novel.

If seaweed is suddenly a trend, McDonald's was years ahead of its time when it released that seaweed burger in the 80's.  Such a pity that burger isn't still around, it actually tasted pretty good.  I think kale is great and delicious,  lots of vitamins and minerals exist in it. If you suffer from vitamin deficiencies its a great food for yiu. I enjoy kale in a morning smoothie for breakfast or even in a kale Caesar salad.

Two food trends that I hate are chia seeds and tofu. I don't like eating a seed that is that small in my food, in cereal it makes me feel like I'm eating small pieces of slippery egg shell. As for tofu, one Easter my partner and I bought a tofurkey. I don't need to say much more than that but I will.  You see we were going for a turkey substitute that, surprise might actually have some resemblance to turkey flavor, not too much to ask  for on a holiday.  Luckily the tofurkey came with a  chocolate cake, its only saving grace. The chocolate cake actually tasted better than the tofurkey.  

Trend: Salted Caramel. Yeah... I'm with others, sign me up for team Salted Caramel. I love the stuff. And salted dark chocolate too!

Trend: There's no such thing as too much garlic. I beg to differ, "Yes, yes there is." I read a reply on this topic in a forum on another site where the responder said, "You just need to know how to balance it." I doubt they meant scale every other flavoring in a recipe in proportion, so what did they mean?

Trend: Food Science in place of "This is how you do it love, don't ask why." Yay! Thank you Harold McGee, Alton Brown, Nathan Myhrvold and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (and others I'm forgetting)! Debunking some old methods, while validating others, but always telling us WHY, or at least backing it up with experimental results. It's so much easier to remember something technical when you know the why.

Trend: Heirloom every vegetable. We lost something in breeding them to commercial uniformity, usually flavor. I'll admit they can get ugly. A tomato sauce made from heirloom tomatos... I don't know about that. But roasted heirloom root vegetables? Lots of beautiful colors and delicious! And if the tomato sauce tastes REALLY good, maybe we can call it 'Bruised'.

Trend: Food Art for Art's Sake (most often built around desserts). If I'm not supposed to eat it anyway, it doesn't matter that it's food. If I wouldn't want to eat it because it tastes terrible, it doesn't matter that it's food.

Trend: Food Porn, photos of your meal. Very mixed thoughts about this. Lauding a restaurant, food truck or city to increase its business because you loved it -- I'm very pro. Sharing with family and friends this new thing you found -- I'm very pro. Lauding over others that you are living the good life and they aren't? Go the colorful four letter word away and go the colorful four letter word yourself!

I've loved seaweed since the early 70's when I starting making turkey and seaweed soup with the Thanksgiving carcass. I only stopped when my sister-in-law started giving the carcass to her son-in-law. But my favorite seaweed cookbooks are relatvely new - 2016 & 2017.

As for chia seeds, I've only used them in drinks where I like them or, of course, as sprouts grown on cutesy terracotta "pets" which have been a kids' project for decades.

I have so much to say on this topic that I'll break it up into convenient pieces.

Avocados. That's lost on me. One of my favorite bagel-and-sandwich places has replaced the eggplant in its sandwiches with avocado. Good business sense for them, disappointing for me.

That is tragic. Eggplant is wonderful in sandwiches; avocados are mundane in sandwiches, only occasionally being the "perfect" ingredient for the sandwich.

there definitely are trends that come and go and some that seem to hang on.  A few years ago I saw tangines, and za'atar and sumac everywhere.  Now I can't get the spice blend Za'atar locally and I only have one place to get Sumac.  I also have noticed that Tangines are not front and center in cooking supply stores as they were.  Edible lavender also had its day.  I still have some.  I will say that baking with lavender made my house smell absolutely amazing!  Unfortunately anything I made with lavender gave me horrific heartburn.  

The one trend, that I can't get on board with, but rolls around every Autumn here is pumpkin spice.  This year they have already started, it is only August, with pumpkin spice items on menus, pumpkin cake, muffin and loaf pans in kitchen supply stores and pumpkin spice coffees at local coffee stores/breakfast places.   

Even while it's still gazpacho season! Typical marketing "creep."

Reminder: Eat that gazpacho you bought at the Westside Market.

Interesting you mention this.  I own two tajines.  One is very small, rustic rough clay with very tall top and other is high end Emile Henry largish tajine with moderate sized top.  I have only used these tajines only couple of times and use my nabe which I have about 10 various sizes and styles much more because I find them much more versatile.  So since I needed to get more space to accommodate new addition of kitchen pieces, I put away the tall, tall, cumbersome small tajine top way on top of the cabinet because I will most likely never use it again. The bottoms I use when baking something that does not require depth and can be stored inside the big tajine.

A trend that seems to be all over the place is honey where it doesn't belong

I've almost got used to James Martin glazing his confit de canard with honey (but won't emulate), and some European chefs are obsessed with putting it into Asian foods where I'm pretty sure it isn't normally found, I think it perhaps seems more exotic to them than a pinch of sugar

And now the big thing is ruining perfectly good cheese by drizzling it with honey; there may be dishes in which cheese and honey are a good pairing, but making cheese sweet and sticky is an awful mistake for my personal palate - I do eat fruit with cheese, but honey is just overwhelming

Evidence 

https://www.thespruceeat...-perfect-contrast-591303

I may be wrong but use of honey has been popular in the US and in Japan for some time now.  

Fermented honey was the element of the honey craze I just couldn't get enthusiastic about ... perhaps aided by the fact that one of my three jars of the stuff exploded.

It's been around a long time but crispy chile oil/sauce seems to be a bit of a fad in some circles. It replaces gochujang which is so yesterday. I'd like black vinegar to be the next in thing.

The issue I have with honey is that most people just say "honey"  like it is this generic thing.  I like cheese boards with very lighter not overwhelmingly sweet or thick  honeys.  I visited Savannah and did a honey tasting there and found a couple I really like and I am not a big honey eater.  Honey can have different flavors and consistencies.   A few years ago I noticed tons of magazine recipes using  maple syrup for a sweetener and I could not get on board for that.  I really don't care for the taste of maple.  That seems to have died down though as I haven't seen it that much lately.