2025 was a particularly big year for ‘trendy’ foods. The phrase ‘Dubai chocolate’ was barely heard of just 12 months ago. Pistachio-flavoured-anything was thrust into the spotlight, while equally green matcha lattes continued to corner the coffee market. We fell in love with Korean food (again), hot honey hit the mainstream, cottage cheese (of all things) piggybacked off the protein craze and tiramisu became our dessert of choice.

While we won’t be too sad to see the back of some of those things, we’re naturally curious about what’s going to replace them. The Great British Chefs team has pulled together its predictions for the year ahead in the world of food and restaurants – take a look below.

While a wedge of charred hispi has been the sweetheart (literally) of the trendy dining world for a while now, the underrated leafy veg is quickly taking pole position as the brassica du jour of 2026. It ticks the health box, is a key component of many comforting cuisines and can stand up to fierce cooking and bold flavours. Expect savoy, red and even plain old white cabbage to start rising to the fore.

There's been a renaissance in classical, French-influenced cooking for a few years now, but 2026 will really see the foundations of what makes this style of cooking so good take centre stage. With chefs like Adam Byatt showing how you can take something as simple as carrots or parsnips and turn them into showstopping dishes with little more than salt, know-how and (lots of) butter, we're going to see more stripped back dishes on menus which showcase technique as the star. The likes of Lyle’s and other ‘New Nordic’-influenced places championed stripped-back, produce-led cooking already, but this new iteration of ingredient-focused dishes will be much more decadent and, well, tasty.

Lannan in Edinburgh, Landrace in Bath, Mabel in Norfolk... and that's before you even get to the likes of London’s Dusty Knuckle, Pophams, Quince and Toad. Bakeries are getting as much (if not more) hype than restaurants these days, and you'll be seeing more and more opening up across the UK with a focus on incredible bread and pastries – as well as the morning queues that inevitably follow. Sustainable flours in the breads and beautiful (yet not overly fussy) pastries are becoming a real calling card of the UK’s food scene, giving the patisseries of France a run for their money.

A restaurant needs to be open to make money, which is why it’s always a big deal when the decision is made to shut up shop for refurbishment. But more and more of the country’s fanciest spots are doing just that. They’re adding separate bar areas for guests to enjoy aperitifs and snacks; blurring the lines between kitchen and dining room for a more immersive experience; generally updating the décor if they’ve been around a while and, in the case of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, closing for over a year to completely overhaul the whole operation. Expect to see more and more restaurants reinventing or changing parts of themselves to win a Michelin star (or a second or third) or to just adapt to changing customer habits.

The worlds of science, art and health have had a bit of an infatuation with fungi as of late. Prints of Yayoi Kusama’s dotty shrooms adorn many a living room wall; there are serious studies being done into how the more psychedelic varieties can benefit our minds and we’re even putting ground up mushroom powders in our morning coffee. That’s starting to change the sorts of mushrooms we cook with, too. While we’re never going to stop frying up girolles, morels, portobellos and good old chestnut mushrooms, some of the tastier ‘functional’ mushrooms – think lion’s mane, shiitake and hen of the woods (or maitake) – are being namechecked on more and more menus. Jack Croft and Will Murray of Fallow’s mushroom parfait is one of the most popular recipes on our site as of late, which comes adorned with raw lion’s mane and heaps of shiitake in the purée.

Great pizza, ramen and burger places are often so popular because they focus on one thing and absolutely smash it. Rather than having a larger menu which inevitably includes some dishes that are better than others, we’re seeing more and more openings with a super-simple offering which allows the team to be laser-focused. Frites Atelier (essentially fancy loaded fries from a three-starred Dutch chef) opened in London at the end of 2025; Durak Tantuni has enjoyed a recent surge in popularity (despite being open since 2002) for its Turkish spiced beef lavash wraps – and it doesn’t sell anything else. Expect this trend to continue, with bolder, confident offerings which help the restaurant keep costs and waste down.

‘Fusion’ used to be a bit of a dirty word in the world of food; the idea of ‘authenticity’ reigned supreme. But in a place as multicultural and diverse as the UK, cuisines are naturally going to collide, combine and mix to create something new and unique. More and more chefs and restaurants are no longer allowing the constraints of what cuisines ‘should’ be to limit their creativity; flavour rules supreme. There are those who combine an international cuisine with British ingredients (such as John Chantasarak at AngloThai and Santiago Lastra at KOL) and those who simply look at the entire world as their larder and inspiration and see what comes of it.

What is often billed as a rushed bowl of cereal is actually one of the fastest-growing areas for restaurants to tap into. More and more of us are eating out for breakfast – and that doesn’t just mean bottomless brunches on the weekend. The range of breakfast dishes continues to increase, and while restaurants like the Michelin-starred HIDE have been known for their fancy breakfast offering for a while now, places such as Pavyllon (also Michelin-starred) are doing things like launching breakfast tasting menus. Expect to see more restaurants opening for breakfast and shouting about their morning menus.