Three threads run through our 2026 forecast: How ethnicity is dominating food trends, how artificial intelligence will overhaul the ways we create menus and dishes and how questing for proteins and weight-loss drugs are changing the ways consumers engage with restaurant menus.

Plus these hot topics: Cardamom is the next spice. Kimchi in everything. How tropical fruit and silk road spices are dominating restaurant flavors. They’re taming the heat of chili crunch. Why global fashion houses are seducing celebrity chefs. Indian food goes luxury. Caribbean cuisine explodes. Fermented honey. Beef fat is good for you? Get ready for mushroom soda. New wave ethnic wine bars and coffee houses.

THREE EMERGING CUISINES

• UPSCALE INDIAN BREAKS THE PRICE BARRIER
• NEW WAVE CARIBBEAN BREAKS OUT OF NICHE STATUS
• NEW ETHNIC STEAKHOUSES BREAK WITH TRADITION

HERE COMES INDIAN OPULENCE

Forget tikka masala takeout, wave goodbye to bad renditions of butter chicken … luxurious Indian restaurants are migrating from England. Their menus will be unambiguously flavorful and regionally focused.

Opulent Ambassador’s Clubhouse … with upscale Punjabi cooking … is opening a 7,900 sq.ft. duplex in Manhattan. And sister restaurant Gymkhana (two Michelin stars) is opening
a big splurge restaurant in the Aria resort in Las Vegas. Backed by LVH money, 11-unit Dishoom is opening in lower Manhattan.

And Darjeeling Express may be headed here as well. Previous blockbuster successes by local Indian restaurants take the risk out of these massive imports’ investments. Musaafar’s extravaganza interior You can’t get a table at Unapologetic Foods’ restaurants … Dhmaka, Masalawalla, Adda and Semma (#1 restaurant in NYC). Their food is nerve-jangly incendiary, buttressed by overdoses of Indian spice blends.

You can’t get into Bungalow either … jammed nightly with chic South Asian clientele. And Michelin-starred Musaafer from Houston opened a 10,000 square footer in Manhattan earlier this year with sky’s-the-limit interiors. With an Indianized birria taco.

Indian-Americans’ high family incomes … combined with our country’s quest for new flavors … combined with more sophisticated gastronomic tastes … all signal that Indian food is no longer a niche business. Expect investors to shower money on expanding these concepts.

BREAK OUT THE RUM: NEW WAVE CARIBBEAN IS THE NEXT FLAVOR EXPLOSION

Bye-bye Bahama Breeze. Boisterous, blistering and rum-fueled, Caribbean restaurants are next year’s stars. Immigrants from the Islands have kept their scintillating cuisine mostly in their ethnic neighborhoods.

So Caribbean ingredients are a reach for American diners: roti, scotch bonnet, guava, fiery Jamaica curry, plantains; especially jerk seasoning rich in clove, pimiento, nutmeg, allspice, and chilies; oxtail, breadfruit, salt cod. But that’s all changing … with tropical ingredients and techniques now showing in upscale
restaurants across the country.

In New York, Caribbean-inflected Tatiana serves jerk cod with buttermilk soubise and braised oxtails while the New York Philharmonic is thrumming upstairs. (Upscale-downscale: Chef Kwame Onwuachi has a Caribbean meat patty venture,
upscale Dogon in Washington, and is godfather to Las Lap rum bars in Miami and NY). Paul Carmichael … a Momofuko alum … also has it both ways with a $145 tasting menu at new wave Kabawa in Manhattan (goat confit with spicy scallop ceole and fried bay leaves) and a next-door bar (short rib patties with bone marrow and conch).

Has expansion written all over it. Isla (photo right) with dazzling décor in Washington, serves smoked chicken with jerk jus, pickled pimento and fried curry leaf. LA there’s high-design Lucia with its no-kidding Carib menu featuring saltfish-fig croquets and Guyanese lobster chow mein.

And Michelle Bernstein’s opened her second middle-of-the road La Canita restaurant in Kendall, Florida.

ETHNIC STEAKHOUSES GO ROGUE

Never mind drought, shrinking cattle herds and soaring prices: Steakhouses continue expanding … but now with serious ethnic menus. Clever strategy: They simply insert a traditional American steakhouse menu onto a traditionally ethnic menu. Look for premium Mexican, Argentine, Korean and Japanese steakeries … and Thai, Chinese and Israeli chophouses.

Jose Andres, who turned us onto aged grass-fed steaks from old cows, opened a Basque-style asador called Txula, with 60-day aged beef. A cool Brooklyn group is importing an Italian steakhouse to Miami with interiors to match Florida’s vibes. DC’s Brasero Atlantic puts its Argentine grill right at the front door (photo, right).

Read the full report here