Three terrifying visions of our food future, courtesy of Condé Nast Traveler

Three terrifying visions of our food future, courtesy of Condé Nast Traveler

The tea leaves of our impending food future have settled—and they look ominous. Condé Nast Traveler predicts that over the next few years, the dining world will undergo some dire changes. Three choice items among the soothsaying:

  1. Chefs will be on their hands and knees, foraging for native plant species in the wild.
  2. Restaurants will be passé, or, if they exist at all, will function like galleries, inviting diners into bizarre exhibitions of intense stimuli (think seafood dish paired with an iPod playing sounds of the sea, seagulls squawking in the background).
  3. Chefs will embrace science like never before, consulting chemists, X-rays and CT scans to seamlessly separate stocks, identify animal structures and whip up perfectly textured sauces.

Though these trends are already apparent in the U.S., there are similar harbingers of change on Toronto’s horizon. Jamie Kennedy, locavore hero par excellence, sources ingredients for his Gardiner Café exclusively from the city’s artisanal growers (we’ve heard no reports as yet of him on all fours looking for edible shrubs in High Park). Claudio Aprile, the renowned gastro-avant-gardist at Colborne Lane, is already on the foodie science bandwagon. He’s even a stickler for the right soundtrack—“Everything we do in life should have a soundtrack,” he told us last year.

Looks like Traveler may be on to something. Then again, no matter how smart those Condé Nasties are, even they couldn’t have predicted this.

The New Food [Condé Nast Traveler]