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New on the Menu

Articles on new and innovative food and beverage items trending across the independent restaurant landscape

New on the menu: Two halibuts and a PSL Espresso Martini

Plus a bison meatball sandwich and Filipino fried chicken

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

September 27, 2024

5 Slides
The PSL Espresso Martini at Coral Club in Nashville
The Espresso Martini is arguably the most popular cocktail in the country at the moment, and the Pumpkin Spice Latte has been the most popular coffee drink of the late summer and early fall for a couple of decades. Matthew Izaguirre, co-owner and bar manager of Coral Club in Nashville, combines the two with this drink. Coral Club

The Pumpkin Spice Latte remains the most popular coffee beverage of this time of year (apple drinks are giving it a run for its money this year, but the PSL still reigns supreme), and the Espresso Martini is a cocktail that just won’t go away. Why more people aren’t combining the two is a mystery, but Matthew Izaguirre is doing just that at Coral Club in Nashville.

At the Washington, D.C., location of the Lebanese restaurant Ilili (there’s one in New York City, too), chef Satinder Vij is cooking halibut in sous-vide and dressing it in a sauce inspired by the Lebanese dairy-and-grain product known as Kishk.

Halibut, specifically from Alaska, is also the star of a dish at Spoonbar in Healdsburg, Calif., where executive chef Wyatt Keith gives it a sort of Saltimboca preparation, but with dill instead of sage. It’s part of the restaurant’s new menu developed in collaboration with Ryan Fancher, executive chef of Piazza Healdsburg Group, which operates the h2hotel where Spoonbar is located.

In Los Angeles, Sage Regenerative Kitchen has a mission to use local and sustainable items, but with more of focus on sustainability in the case of its Bison Meatball Pezzolo, which features Force of Nature bison from Texas, but raised using regenerative grazing practices, and mozzarella cheese from Ohio, but from pasture-raised Guernsey cows producing A2 milk, which is believed to be easier to digest than milk that contains both A2 and A1 dairy proteins.

Immigrant Foods also has a mission, which it calls "gastro-advocacy," highlighting the food of the many cultures that make up the United States, including that of the Philippines, which is the inspiration for its fried chicken.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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