The Menu: A look at the year ahead

Joe McNamee takes a look at the culinary scene ahead of us for 2017.

Reclining on his divan, sporting the hairshirt of contrition (made from the purest mulberry silk, it is the civilised way to embark on New Year’s resolutions and set about atoning for the excesses of Christmas), Mystic Menu once more brings to bear his enormous powers of prescience and looks deep into the future culinary year ahead.

In previous years, The Menu’s predictions have sometimes proven so far ahead of the curve that they are only now coming to pass but much of that is down to the innate caution and conservatism of the native Irish eater who will often only accept change grudgingly and at a glacial pace until one fine day, the floodgates open and whatever is the latest fad is instantly marked down as our nearest and dearest culinary tradition.