Top chefs in Philly predict the biggest food trends for 2015

We asked some of Philly’s most notable chefs and restaurant owners what to expect in the food scene in 2015. Here’s what they had to say.

The foods you’ll see everywhere:

​Root vegetables! Also, I think more alternative meat cuts will make it to the center of the plate. I think we will keep unearthing simple ingredients that get ignored or taken advantage of — think carrots, radishes, local fish like shad and carp.
Jonathan Adams,Co-owner, Rival Bros Coffee

Less radishes.
Townsend Wentz,Chef/owner, Townsend

Extruded pastas will grow in popularity and a focus on vegetables will continue to evolve throughout the year.
Eli Collins,Executive chef, Pub & Kitchen

We’ll see more grains and legumes, but as an ingredient in other dishes: Mixed in green salads, fried crisp as a textural element to a vegetable dish, in savory and sweet pancakes.
Marcie Turnery,Chef/co-owner,Lolita, Barbuzzo, Jamonera, Little Nonna’s and the upcoming Bud & Marilyn’s

We’ll see more foraged wild ingredients this year — stinging nettles, fiddlehead ferns and ramps.
Andrew Wood,Executive chef/owner, Russet

The cooking style heating up:

Rotisserie and open spit cooking has just perked up again. Places like Zahav and Vetri have been doing it all along but now the public is really getting excited.
Jonathan Adams

Last year solid fuel cooking — using coal and wood for everything — became popular and it’s still going. It’s a very Old World technique, and it’s funny when things like that become trendy. But it adds new flavors. It adds another layer.
Michael Pasquarello, Owner, Cafe Lift, Prohibition Taproom, Bufad and Kensington Quarters

Hopefully, we’ll see some of the hearth/open fire kitchens use their rotisseries to do some larger cuts.
Townsend Wentz

​We are making a move towards simplicity in 2015. Philly should see fermentation and other means of preservation on the upswing. These aging methods can evoke completely new flavor profiles in even the most simple ingredients.
Jason Cichonski,Executive chef, The Gaslight and Ela

I think we are going to start seeing more regional Mexican cuisines and South American cuisines.
Andrew Wood

It’s not a specific style but we are going to see more and more well trained chefs taking on ethnic foods and street foods from lesser known parts of the world. It’s already been done by some well-known chefs who have made their names doing this — Alex Stupak, Danny Bowien, Andy Ricker — in larger markets. It will start to filter down into smaller dining markets.
Eli Collins

And what about farm to table?:

Philly will continue to embrace the farm to table movement, but in a new regard. It has become more of an everyday practice with many chefs in our area, and for good reason: We have an exceptional local bounty.What I found to be overwrought was the language and tone used in some restaurant’s menus. It’s great to list all of the farms and purveyors, but a menu should be a guide for the dining experience, as opposed to a Rolodex of where it all came from.
Jonathan Adams