Trendsetters' Guide to Food and Travel: The Latest Trends and Must-Visit Destinations

Trend pieces age badly, so treat this one as a snapshot rather than a forecast. What follows is what changed in the last twelve months and looks likely to hold — the shifts that are structural rather than seasonal.

The counter replaced the dining room

Twelve seats, one chef, no menu. The format spread out from Tokyo to almost everywhere, and it survived because the economics work: a small room with no waiting staff can charge less than a formal restaurant while paying its cooks more. The version worth seeking out is the one where the counter faces the pass and the chef talks to you.

What to avoid is the imitation — a long counter, a tasting menu of fourteen courses, and a wall of silence. If nobody is talking to you, you are in a dining room with worse chairs.

Slow transport stopped being a compromise

Night trains came back across Europe, and not out of nostalgia: they arrive in the centre of the city at breakfast, they cost less than a flight plus two airport transfers, and you sleep through the journey. The routes through the Alps sold out most weekends last summer.

The knock-on effect is that itineraries got shorter and deeper. When getting between two cities takes a night rather than a morning, you stop trying to see five of them.

Where to go before everyone else does

The secondary cities are where the interesting cooking is happening — the places with a good market, a culinary school and rents a thirty-year-old can afford. Look for that combination and you will usually find a restaurant scene about two years ahead of the capital's.