2019 Will Be the Year of Soup

2019’s hottest restaurant trend has been revealed

It’s soup. Fluid, infinitely customisable, and almost always hot right now. Twitter — in its wisdom — has predicted that soup will be the hottest food trend of 2019. Financial Times food writer Tim Hayward prompted the declaration with a meditation on the “pointless endless self-reference” of spreading trends through media, in which this article will not partake. Writer and baker Tim Smith, based in York, then declared, “Charcoal, forage, sea vegetables, anything Mallmann (Patagonian pyromaniac, Francis) says... soup.” Cambridge and London-based Hayward’s reply spread the nascent trend south, before Manchester food writer Thom Hetherington took things north: “I hear #soup is going to be the hottest food trend of 2019.” Hashtag bestowed, geographical omnipresence achieved, London’s first and only accidental hypebeast Bob Granleese sealed the deal: “I’m in #soup.” Supreme’s line of soup caps is already in the works; wellness soup is coming; Jay Rayner agrees. All soup needs now is a soup-only Shoreditch pop-up restaurant, a sponsored @soup Instagram account, a prominent article misrepresenting its origins, a chef to discover it, again, in June 2019, a “hyper-global outlook for the experiential millennial,” the adoption of an innovative version by a takeaway behemoth, a trend-flipping innovation (gazpacho, ajo blanco, and salmorejo willing candidates) and a dedicated London guide.

Vote now for London’s Restaurateur of the Year

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Mayfair’s most hidden Michelin-starred restaurant to close

Bonhams, inside the auction house on New Bond Street, will close 19 December.

Tower Bridge queuers finally open adjacent bakery

Custard, the long-awaited bakery attached to Gunpowder Tower Bridge, is now open. The bakery’s Instagram profile — not @custard, see above — reveals pastries available on the counter at Gunpowder, 11am — 4pm daily.