When a country’s food culture is reduced to an ephemeral food trend, cuisines are stripped of the cultural context and significance, writes Alex O’Neill.
Every year, food writers and trend forecasters release their lists of what’s “hot” in the culinary world. They are often very similar, following the same formats, highlighting the same trends to come and following the same broad categories. The next health kick, this year’s new favourite dessert, cocktail or superfood, the next social media viral sensation we’ll all be cooking. All fairly fun and light. But there’s also a guaranteed focus on what cuisine is promised to take over.
One year it was Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino last year, and this year I’ve seen “the flavours of Africa”, or “West African” food highlighted as the next fad. The idea that a continent of 1.5 billion people could be categorised in this sweeping way is preposterous. These predictions are reductive, stripping cuisines of their cultural context and significance.
Many restaurant awards in Ireland would make you think every kitchen and restaurant in the country is filled with white, male, Irish chefs only; I challenge you to find a single kitchen in this country that looks like this.
It’s a familiar cycle. A dish that has been lovingly cooked and eaten for centuries finds its way into the Western spotlight. A high-profile chef or a popular influencer proclaims it the “next big thing.” Soon, food writers rush to cover it, restaurants scramble to add it to their menus, and supermarkets repackage it with neat, trendy branding. Rarely, if ever, does this newfound enthusiasm translate into recognition, respect, or financial benefit for the communities that originally created it.
Instead of highlighting the rich, lived experiences of the communities that cook these foods daily, these lists frame cuisines as products. Dishes become watered down to fit Western palates, often with key ingredients substituted or removed. The result is cultural erasure, culinary colonialism and a food industry that continues to privilege whiteness in determining what is valuable.
These cuisines don’t suddenly become interesting or valuable because a trendsetter decides they are. They’ve always been important, just not to the people who so often control the narrative, which in itself is a major part of the issue, as much of the mainstream food media continues to favour white writers when discussing global cuisines. These writers, often with no deep understanding of the culture, produce reviews and think pieces that misrepresent, flatten, or exoticise the food they cover. When chefs and food writers from immigrant communities try to correct these inaccuracies, they can be dismissed as argumentative gatekeepers.
I spoke to Victory Nwabu-Ekeoma of Bia Zine, an Igbo-Irish writer, about this. “When you declare some culture’s food a trend, for me, it’s disconnecting the cuisine from the people who created it,” she tells me. “Yes, there’s visibility for that culture, but what else? Are people engaging more respectfully with those communities? Are they buying said trends from people within those communities who will actually benefit? Usually, no.”
Instead of being recognised as longstanding culinary traditions with rich histories, these foods become disposable, their worth dictated by their momentary popularity in Western food media. This phenomenon is essentially appropriation and colonialism, where dominant groups extract resources, in this case elements of a cuisine, without understanding, crediting, or benefiting the communities that created it.
“I’m all about careful and considered consumption,” Victory tells me. “The nature of a trend is to be fast and fleeting. It peaks and dips and in the speed of a ‘trend cycle’, you strip things back, cut corners, distil things to skeletal versions of themselves to fuel hyper consumption.”
Each year, we hear how it’s been Michelin’s ‘most diverse year ever’, as we look at a stage of 90% white men. Awarding bodies announce their Top 50 and Top 100 lists, and while there’s no denying they are celebrating the phenomenal achievements of chefs, sommeliers, restaurants, cafes and their teams, it does seem like it’s easier for some to make it onto these lists than others. Places get included mere weeks after opening, while some spots that’ve been banging out incredible food for the last 15 years are ignored, despite being favourites of the very chefs receiving awards.
Many restaurant awards in Ireland would make you think every kitchen and restaurant in the country is filled with white, male, Irish chefs only; I challenge you to find a single kitchen in this country that looks like this. Yet every year, we see again and again the same people nominated. The same people winning. Most absurdly, when non-Eurocentric restaurants are finally recognised, they’re often white or Irish-owned. It all feels so performative. Why highlight diversity if it’s not truly valued?
This conversation is more urgent than ever because we’re witnessing a global rollback of progress. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and funding to help support more equitable workplaces and products are being abandoned by major corporations like Google, Meta and Amazon. The political landscape is shifting rightward, fuelling the resurgence of racism, xenophobia, and exclusionary policies. Inequality is widening, and people are being pushed to the brink, forced to fight for basic dignity and survival, never mind representation.
Food, like any other cultural expression, doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it reflects power, privilege, and systemic bias. When cuisines from historically marginalised communities are only celebrated when repackaged by white tastemakers, it mirrors a larger pattern: contributions of BIPOC communities are erased until they can be monetised by those already in power. The same forces that determine who’s published in a global Top 50 list are at play in boardrooms, in politics, in media, deciding who gets heard, who gets funded, and who gets left out. If you haven’t recognised this already, now’s the time.
Food, like any other cultural expression, doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it reflects power, privilege, and systemic bias.
How can we ensure that these trends aren’t harmful or reductive? How instead can they be proactive and a movement towards unity and understanding? How else is this way of thinking seeping into the food industry as a whole?
Culinary gatekeeping and the white gaze
The question is not whether cuisines should cross cultural boundaries. Food travels, it adapts and evolves, and that is a natural part of culinary history. It is not just about who gets credit, but about who gets to be seen as an authority. Why is it that a white food writer’s discovery of a dish is celebrated, while an immigrant chef cooking that same dish for decades struggles for recognition?
Take Sriracha, a Southeast Asian staple long before it became a Western pantry must-have. Or matcha, once dismissed as too bitter, is now a wellness industry darling, celebrated for its aesthetics without a mention of its deep cultural significance in Japan, particularly within Zen Buddhist traditions, where the process of its preparation and consumption are both seen as a ritual and meditative practice. Would it be as welcomed if its benefits weren’t being explained to us by white women?
Most recently, and rather poignantly, is the Dubai chocolate bar. Knafeh is a Palestinian pastry. At a time when the very existence of Palestinians is under threat, and the target of a campaign of ethnic cleansing, I have seen zero reference to where one of the key ingredients of this viral sensation is from in all of the trending videos.
None of these things are singularly inherently bad or intentionally exclusionary, and may not even have crossed the minds of many, but that’s the problem. The explosions of popularity very often don’t fairly financially benefit those from where the speciality originates and it’s important to acknowledge that because there needs to be equity in equality.
Commodification: A colonial hangover
Let’s look at one of the earliest examples of commodification: tea. A drink seen as quintessentially British, yet its origins lie in China, where it was cultivated, refined, and revered for over 5,000 years before Britain decided to profit from it. If you overlaid a map of the British Empire with the global tea trade at its peak, the outlines would be nearly identical. That’s no coincidence. It was a direct result of colonial expansion, driven by the control of one of the world’s most lucrative commodities.
The British Empire didn’t just take tea; it took the land, the labour and the lives of those who produced it. Tea plantations in India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya became sites of brutal exploitation, with workers enduring harsh conditions for little pay, ensuring the British could sip their tea in comfort. The most insidious part of Britain’s tea obsession was how deliberately it distanced the product from its origins, making it a national symbol while erasing its colonial roots. This exploitation hasn’t disappeared; it persists today in the tea, chocolate, and coffee industries.
Representation in food media remains deeply flawed, often tokenising chefs and writers of colour, showcasing diversity when it benefits their image, only to discard these voices once the moment passes. I spoke to Tolu Asemota, a first-generation Irish Nigerian, founder of West African restaurant Ibile in Dublin. “Being supported throughout the year is so important. When we started off, there was a big buzz about what we were doing, but that dies down, the energy gets quieter,” he tells me. “It makes you wonder if they just reached out for a specific article, or if they’re actually interested in what we are doing. Ethnic cuisine is very often forgotten, and it can be a combination of us marketing ourselves more, but we also think that the press should be more conscious of including people.”
Beyond tokenism, there is the issue of who gets to define the conversation. Writers and chefs of colour often find themselves asked to focus solely on race and diversity rather than their craft “Why can’t the international voices be included in the general articles, why must we always speak from the perspective [of diversity]?” asks Tolu.
The contradiction is glaring: love the culture, ignore the people. Food is more than a trend. It is history, identity, and resistance. And the question is not just who gets to profit. It is who gets to tell the story.
Even when conversations about racial inequalities in the food world make headlines, the focus is often on individual bad actors rather than systemic issues. A scandal breaks, a resignation follows, a public apology is issued, and nothing changes. Food media continues to prioritise white perspectives, decontextualise non-Western cuisines, and determine who gets to have a voice in the industry, and so, people are afraid to speak up about the inequality, worried that to do so will impact them negatively. As Tolu puts it, “you feel like you want to speak up, but you can’t.”
Moving beyond trends
The food industry needs to rethink how it approaches representation, credit and equity. It is not enough to tokenise diverse voices when it is convenient. It is not enough to celebrate a cuisine for a fleeting moment and then move on. And it is certainly not enough to treat food as just another consumable product, detached from the people who make it meaningful.
The same people who eagerly embrace flavours from immigrant communities are often the ones who remain silent, or worse, complicit, when those very communities face discrimination. This contradiction is glaring: love the culture, ignore the people. We see this in food, music, art, fashion – it’s a systemic issue. Food is more than a trend. It is history, identity, and resistance. And the question is not just who gets to profit. It is who gets to tell the story.
The conversation around food trends often ignores the fact that these foods were once ridiculed. The same publications now celebrating a dish for its “bold flavours” and cultural significance are often the same ones that dismissed it. Foods once labelled as “too pungent” or “too slimy” are now being embraced, but only when they are curated by the right voices.
Thankfully in Ireland, we are seeing more and more independent publications showcase how the industry really looks, which shows that it can be done, and is far more interesting when it is. I spoke to Richie Castillo, an Irish-Filipino chef, owner of Bahay and my partner about why representation matters, but also how deeply personal this topic is. “Young chefs, immigrants themselves, or second generation, third culture kids who have deep cultural ties to where their family came from, but are equally tethered to Ireland, find themselves lost between both places,” he tells me. “Both being home, but neither home, seeing them as being truly “from there”. These same young chefs are forced to cook Eurocentric food in order to fit in, gain attention or make a name for themselves. Show you can cook their food well first, before you can be considered “good enough” to showcase the food you grew up with, the food that is your one true anchor, your one true feeling of belonging.”
For Richie, critique from people who often don’t have a reference point can be hard to take if the food is being unfairly criticised. “I don’t need validation, but sharing anything leaves you open to critique and judgement, but when those critiquing often don’t even have a modicum of understanding of what that food represents, what it means on a deeply personal level, it says a lot.” He continues, “It’s like justifying your very existence, but to them it’s just a sensational headline or their weekly article.”
“Even now, BIPOC-owned spots are instantly targets for complaints of the food being ‘expensive’, ‘overrated’ or the incredulous cries of ‘it didn’t even come with rice’. It’s a blatant disregard of the agency, skill and expertise of people whose world revolves around what they are trying to do, by people who sit down for a two-hour meal,” Richie added.
As the world grows more hostile to diversity, it’s not enough to simply acknowledge these injustices. We must actively counter them. That means calling out performative inclusion, amplifying voices that are sidelined, and ensuring that cultural recognition comes with real economic and social equity. It means refusing to let trends dictate whose heritage is valuable.
Right now, as institutions quietly retreat from commitments to inclusion and the right wing gains momentum, silence is complicity. If we don’t push back, we risk losing the progress we’ve fought for, and the consequences will be felt far beyond the food industry.
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