Trend-Watch 2025: Pasta for the win!
Ringing in a new year always includes a fresh batch of food trend predictions from the experts. We’re excited when we see dialed-in pundits like Datassential and Flavor & the Menu are pegging a big year for pasta in foodservice! From pastina to the “casualization of pasta” there’s lots to look forward to.
First up, according to Datassential, star-shaped pastina and other small shapes known for use in comfort-food soups in Italy will be catching fire with consumers in 2025. It’s the mix of classic comfort food and nostalgia with a bit of the cute, small and new. Call it Italian penicillin if you like, we’ll be busy making more pastina! Other cultures and cuisines take part in this too – we’ve been seeing Turkish manti – a tiny, ditalini-like shape — pop up on trendy menus from NYC to SF. Think creatively with orzo, risoni or even fideo, and you unlock all kinds of dishes that guests will be looking for.
Flavor & the Menu named “casualization of pasta” a top 10 trend for 2025. This trend has many layers, but one is a return to classic and familiar dishes like carbonara, cacio e pepe and the like; with simple upgrades and updates to keep them fresh. To bring this to life, add chili crisp to a carbonara, summer squashes and blossom to that cacio e pepe, or take guests back to the origins with pasta alla gricia or amatriciana.
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Another entry point for “casualization” is with cross-cultural mashups that use pasta as the broadly-appealing foundation. Those wafu dishes like mentaiko spaghetti that use Japanese ingredients and sensibility with traditional Italian pastas, for instance. Or a birria-inspired penne with shortribs from Chef Luis Haro. Or take Chef Tish Rogers’ southern-inspired bucatini with smoked chicken and greens. At the core, this trend is about the simple fact that everyone (well, 89% of everyone)* loves pasta, and pasta is for everyone…no matter where they’re from.
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Looking back to Menu Matters’ Consumer Needs State for the year, “Give Me Something New,” you can see how playing with pasta in this way fits right in. A little flavor adventure, luxury upgrade or as simple a swap as a new pasta shape takes something already craveable and plusses it up to something worth leaving the couch for. Or at least ordering in.
So much more to dig into as we roll into the new year! Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, and we’ll see you in the next edition!
*Datassential, 2024