By Leigh O’Connor.
If 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that flavour isn’t just something we eat - it’s become something we perform. Our palates have grown louder, braver, stranger and somehow more theatrical than ever.
Everywhere you look, there’s a Chef torching something, someone on TikTok coaxing life from a jar of fermenting mystery sludge, or a plate arriving at your table crowned in a fragile cloud of foam that vanishes before you can decide whether to be impressed.
So, are we becoming more adventurous eaters, or simply better at pretending we are?
Let’s start with the obsession that has dominated the decade: umami. Once the elusive ‘fifth taste’, umami has now become a personality trait. Diners request it by name - "something earthy, savoury…you know, umami-forward” - and Chefs respond with swagger.
Miso butter is no longer enough; now it’s shiitake-aged miso butter whipped with smoked soy and speckled with dehydrated kombu dust. Anchovies have been rehabilitated into luxury. Bonito flakes flutter across dishes like edible confetti. Even the humble tomato has been rebranded: slow-roasted, sun-shrivelled, caramelised to a concentrated burst of savoury-sweet fireworks.
Umami isn’t just a flavour - it’s a feeling. A kind of culinary gravity. A quiet, savoury bass note that hums through the dishes of 2025 like a heartbeat. It’s the taste of depth, of roots, of something older than we are. In a world that’s constantly flickering and ephemeral, perhaps we crave that anchor.
Speaking of old things becoming cool again, fermentation has gone from a fringe experiment to a full-blown cultural movement. The countertop kombucha scooby is the new houseplant.
"I’m feeding my sourdough starter” is an acceptable reason to decline social plans. Chefs speak about lactobacillus like they’re discussing their favourite football team. The flavours? Funky, complex, electric, unpredictable - fermentation is the culinary equivalent of releasing a wild animal into your kitchen and hoping it behaves.
There’s something addictive about the alchemy of it: letting time and microbes merge into something that tastes impossibly alive. It’s food that grows, bubbles and hisses back at you. Food with personality. Food that makes you feel like you’re part of the process, not just the consumer.
If fermentation is our new hearth fire - slow, soulful, intimate - then fire itself has become the planet’s favourite stage light. Restaurants are turning into pyrotechnic playgrounds. Flames leap, crackle, kiss ingredients with primal drama. Charcoal cooking is everywhere, from the sleekest urban bistro to your neighbour’s weekend barbeque setup that costs more than a holiday. Smoke has become a flavour we chase: woody, sweet, resinous, or whisper-light, like perfume.
Then...foam. Ah yes, the airy crown atop our modern appetite for spectacle. Foam is the wink of culinary theatre - an edible special effect. Once mocked as pretentious, it has returned with a sense of humour. Beetroot foam, oyster foam, burnt butter foam - it’s playful now, less ‘serious Chef’ and more ‘Why not?’ It’s the garnish equivalent of jazz hands.
So, have our palates become truly adventurous?
Absolutely. We’re exploring flavours our grandparents never dreamed of. We embrace sour, bitter, smoky, funky, salty, earthy, fermented, charred, fermented-then-charred. We crave intensity and nuance in equal measure.
Are we also performing a little? Also, absolutely.
Our taste evolution has become intertwined with identity. Eating has gone public. Every dish is a statement; every flavour a flex. We post the sizzle before we taste the steak. We chase the bold, the strange, the combustible, because it feels like participating in culture - not just dinner.
2025 has been the year flavour became entertainment. Honestly? It’s deliciously fun.
