Brave diners explore new horizons: as Americans are growing more inclined to try new foods, intrepid restaurateurs extend the borders of viable international flavors

Nation's Restaurant News,  Jan 29, 2007  by Bret Thorn

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Customers at Big Boy restaurants in the late 1980s who were adventuresome enough to try the Oriental Chicken dinner were known to express wonder at the exotic snow peas on the plate. Now McDonald's salads feature edamame. Denny's fish dishes come with beurre blanc. Jerk chicken is commonplace on chain restaurant menus.

Consumer research indicates that Americans' favorite restaurant foods continue to be burgers, fries, chicken sandwiches and pizza. But these days that pizza might be topped with Greek olives and feta cheese, and the fries could be dusted in curry powder.

"The American public is a much more mature, savvy public than it was 20 years ago," says Larry Flax, co-founder and co-chief executive of California Pizza Kitchen, the Los-Angeles-based chain that, 21 years ago, began selling pizza topped with barbecued chicken and Cajun ingredients.

Since then, chain restaurants have become more sophisticated, and consumers have become more demanding. "The American public has become much more

astute in terms of food variety," Flax says, adding that people no longer believe that only the wealthy can eat well and get good service.

Culinary adventurism is no longer the province of the food snob, and Flax credits the media, particularly the Food Network, with imbuing his customers with more of a desire to learn about what other foods the world has to offer.

And what chain restaurants don't offer will be found elsewhere. According to Chinese Restaurant News, a Chinese-language trade magazine, the United States is home to nearly 40,900 Chinese restaurants. That's more than the number of U.S. units of McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC combined.

Dan McGowan, president of Big Bowl, a Chinese-Thai chain owned by Chicago-based Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, says the biggest change in taste can be found in kids and twentysomethings.

The 40-year-old McGowan says he was raised on TV dinners. "We had Hungry Man meat loaf and turkey dinners and mac and cheese. I think the kids in their late teens to early 20s learned to go out more, so their palates have become a lot more sophisticated."

"It's the age-old thing of Adam biting the apple. Knowledge and being exposed to different things have created a different customer," says Miami-based chef-owner Norman Van Aken. At his restaurant Norman's in Coral Gables, Fla., Van Aken was one of the early developers of South Florida's "New World Cuisine," which incorporates the culinary customs of the many Caribbean and Latino cultures in the area. He also lays claim to coining the term "fusion" in cooking.

He says Americans' acceptance of sushi led the way to accepting other small bites of food such as tapas and mezze. That, in turn, allowed customers to experiment without the emotional and financial commitment to a main course.

"People can try different things without plunking down $30," Van Aken says.

That, combined with chefs traveling, "or Internet traveling or television traveling," has led to a taste for adventure on the palate.

Van Aken sees this new taste in his mostly well-to-do, middle-aged customers as well as in kids.

Kids apparently have a higher threshold for pain, too, says McGowan of Big Bowl. Between 15 percent and 20 percent of his young customers love hot and spicy food. "Those people are really passionate about it, and they blog about it and they tell their friends," McGowan says.

While really spicy items will never be huge sellers, they can win extremely loyal customers, so McGowan added a page of "Red Hot Dishes" to Big Bowl's menu that includes Thai green curry and Szechuan beef with fresh hot peppers.

But when it comes to expanding Americans' global palate, you can only go so far, caution the chefs of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based P.F. Chang's China Bistro Inc., which operates its namesake chain as well as Pei Wei Asian Bistro and, as of last year, the first unit of Taneko Japanese Tavern.

"A lot of our core guests will always be coming in for the heavy Chinese-style dishes that we do--lots of sugar, spice and heavy seasonings," says Eric Justice, director of culinary operations at the fast-casual Pei Wei chain.

If a chain wants to introduce something new, he says, it has to be a dish with which customers are sufficiently familiar and willing to experiment on a variation.

"Don't make the dish all about the new ingredient, so it's not all about an educational experience," he advises.

Justice says he took that cautious approach when he introduced a chewy Japanese udon noodle dish. He based it on a wok-fried noodle dish and simply swapped in a different noodle. He added a fairly obscure citrus juice, Japanese yuzu, to give it "a light, fresh flavor," but he didn't mention it on the menu.

At Taneko, Paul Muller, the partner in charge of concept development there, says the best-selling item is steak, albeit American Kobe beef marinated in white soy, ginger and yuzu and seared tableside on a ceramic stone.