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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: Updated chicken & dumplings and Baked Alaska

Plus a Filipino-Japanese soup, customizable poisson en papillote and a sweet and floral cocktail

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

June 17, 2022

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Atípico, Spanish for “atypical,” is the name of a two-unit restaurant in Mexico City with an ever-evolving menu that was supposed to open in Dallas in June, but that has been pushed back to July. Late openings are anything but atypical, even at the best of times, and these days are to be expected. But founder and “chief atypical officer” Claudia de Murga, does plan on featuring the Ya Maika cocktail on her opening menu. It’s sweet and floral like her daughter Maika, after whom it is named.

These days many chefs are actually aiming for typical, but with a twist, which is why at Peachy Keen in New York City chef Nicholas McCann is serving chicken & dumplings with some refined touches — French-butchered chicken, heirloom carrots, ricotta dumplings — at the almost unheard-of entrée price in the Big Apple of $18

Similarly, but for a higher price tag, RPM Italian in Chicago has a Baked Alaska, but with an Italian name and salted caramel.

In Brunswick, Maine, at 555 North, chef Steve Corry is taking a classic French presentation but adding sides of pickled fennel, hazelnuts and lavender salt to allow guests to play — or “customize” if you prefer to call it that.

And back in New York City, at Gugu Room, chefs Aris Tuazon and Markee Manaloto combine Philippine and Japanese culture in a soup of short rib and udon.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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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