Menu trends at RLC, how a St. Louis chef is taking sushi to the next level, and hot sauces and LTOs in the spotlight

This week in Menu Talk, Restaurant Business Senior Menu Editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food and beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News, share their takes on some recent happenings in the world of food and beverage.

Pat just returned from Informa’s Restaurant Leadership Conference in Phoenix and she recaps some of the menu innovation sessions that took place. Once again there was a lot of discussion about sauces and the impact of LTOs on menu development. We talk about the rush to make sauces hotter than ever and look at some of the unique limited-time offerings coming out of the R&D pipeline.

April is Earth Month and restaurants are busy promoting their sustainability efforts. Bees get some attention on the menus, with honeyed cocktails and desserts celebrating our planet’s pollinators. And mushrooms, one of the most sustainably grown crops, appear in several menu items.

The environmentally conscious promotions all culminated on Monday, officially “Earth Day.” We’ll also note all the other “days” happening this month with slightly less serious missions, like National Cold Brew Day and National Banana Day.

Bret’s industry interview this week is with Nick Bognar, the chef at Indo and Sado restaurants in St. Louis. Indo is more of a pan-Asian place, but Sado is rooted in Japanese cuisine.

Nick talks about how he offers level one nigiri and sashimi, as well as robata grilling for the less adventurous St. Louis guests who come to have fun. But he also masters much of the sushi at a higher level, using seafood from Japan and applying advanced techniques, such as dry aging, for a more intense flavor experience.

It took Nick about five years to get Sado off the ground, training the staff in butchering and dry-aging and breaking down barriers with his teams and guests. He shares the challenges and rewards of introducing and perfecting the technique and taking the sushi game to the next level in St. Louis.

Menu Talk is a collaboration between Pat Cobe, Senior Menu Editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, Senior Food & Beverage Editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality. You can subscribe to it wherever you listen to podcasts.

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