Firstly, apologies to regular readers for the lack of content lately. Between being away on holiday, and in the launch phase of a new client project, I've neglected the blog over the last couple of months. Starting from here, I plan to put that right.
I first read the phrase "fast casual" in a U.S based restaurant e-zine about six months ago, and now I can't stop hearing about it. There doesn't seem to be a hard and fast definition, but my understanding of it is essentially fast food that isn't junk food. It can be pizza, chicken, tacos, BBQ, burgers etc, once everything is made from scratch using good quality ingredients.
It is one of the fastest growing markets in the U.S restaurant industry, and has begun to spread globally. This has not escaped the notice of big name chefs such as David Chang who clearly saw this market develop from the outset, and plugged into it at the right time. I've watched with interest over the last couple of years as new opening such as Bunsen, Bison, Taco Taco etc in Dublin have flourished, and have tried to get to the bottom of where it all started.
It's an interesting journey which appears to have begun with food trucks on the west coast of America. For years, office workers and fans of good quality fast food, have flocked in their droves to seek out delicious alternatives to the boring lunch time sandwich. Factors such as the recession, climate, and the emergence of social media appear to have combined to generate the explosion in the food truck scene since 2008. The logical progression was for this scene to shift from mobile to fixed premises.
Jonathan Gold wrote in the L.A Times in 2009 that "something truly new is going on, that may fundamentally change the way we look at restaurants". He went on to say that "while nobody was paying attention, food quietly assumed the place in youth culture that used to be occupied by rock 'n' roll". He pointed to the Kogi truck, which broadcasts it's location daily on Twitter, the advent of "pop-up" restaurants, and the general hipness which now surrounds the whole fast casual "street food" movement.
Shake Shack. Courtesy - Website.
Kogi truck. Draws a crowd using social media.
Like speciality coffee before it, it took a few years to make it's way over this side of the Atlantic but is now well established in London, and starting to take hold here. Big operators such as Shake Shack and Five Guys will inevitably follow closely behind.
Personally, I love a good burger or taco as much as the next person, but it's not something I'd travel to seek out. The whole point though, is that I'm not the target market. For young people with disposable income and indie aspirations, there is a certain cachet involved in hunting down the latest "authentic" street food before it goes mainstream.
The bigger picture here, is that we have a sub set of a generation of young people who have a genuine interest in food. As they get older, their tastes will inevitably change but most likely, they will still want to eat good quality food. For me, this is an exciting prospect as it forms the potential bedrock of a future dining culture.
So although I'd like to see more Irish restaurateurs do something unique rather than replicate trends from the U.K or U.S, I'm hopeful that the future of the Irish restaurant industry is in safe hands.