What's in?
MicroBreweries: We will be reporting soon on the tidal wave of new micro-breweries suddenly sprouting up throughout the country, but be assured that the micro-brewery revolution is coming in a big way, with truly creative brewing happening in every corner of the country. The chaps up in Dublin's St James's Gate should be very worried. Very worried indeed.
Noodles: The new Dublin branch of the noodle chain, Wagamama, is going to make noodles very hip indeed, largely thanks to its cool, Zen-like design and cleverly orchestrated service. This will, in turn, cause people to start slurping very loudly whenever they are eating, as the Japanese do when scoffing a bowl of noodles, which will give rise to many parents shouting at their offspring: "Would you ever slack off on the noise while you're eating that boiled egg! You're not in Wagamama now!"
Fusion and woks: Mao, on Dublin's Chatham Row, has been the hip restaurant of the year, but its style of fusion food represents just the tip of the coming culinary iceberg, for fusion food is a style of cooking chefs really enjoy, which is part of the reason why it's going to come in big time. Expect lots of woks, lots of coriander, lots of sesame oil and fish sauce.
Hake: Hake will be the fish of the future. This is not simply because it is delicious - as the Spanish have long realised - and affordable, but because there is no cod left in the seas. So no matter what we are prepared to pay for cod, we simply won't be able to get it. From feast to famine in a mere few decades, the story of cod is one of the food parables of our time and, as with the best parables, a chastening one.
Sausages: Bangers will be the fashionable food of the year. You can serve them with mash and with onions, with gravy, you can serve them in a Cumberland ring, you can spice them with any flavouring you fancy (and you really must have your butcher make special flavours for you), but you will have to have sausages on the menu to be hot to trot in 1999.
Black beans: Black beans are going to be the dish of the year. As Puy lentils are shown the exit, black beans will take their place, with the Chinese salted beans used with fish, and with the black kidney beans paired with just about everything else, like hake and sausages (see above).
What's out?
Minimalist dining rooms: Frankly, I am fed up to the back teeth with dining rooms which all have beech seats and flooring, lots of stainless steel and track lighting. In Belfast, right now, every new dining room looks the same as every other new dining room, and they all look dated.
Comfortable dining rooms are going to be the new thing, and the best example of what is coming is the stunning room created in Conrad Gallagher's Peacock Alley, in the Fitzwilliam Hotel, on St Stephen's Green. Gallagher has totally eschewed the fashionable minimalism of the age to fashion a room which wouldn't look out of place on a 1950s ocean liner, and which is easily the most beautiful dining room in the city. Gallagher has also forsaken tall food, which we predicted last year would soon be a thing of the past.
Lamb Shanks: I know that we in this newspaper are as much to blame as anyone, having devoted a feature to the delicious mouthfuls earlier in the year, but I really do think Irish chefs have overdone it with the lamb shanks. There is hardly a menu in any decent restaurant nowadays which doesn't feature the shanks, done one of a million ways. It's easy to see why they have been a success: they are cheap, chefs love to cook them, and we love to eat them, but it has really got out of hand. Smart chefs will, in future, only put lamb shanks on the menu when they can't get sausages (see above).
Chicken: Chickens lead short, desperate lives, and as more and more of us come to realise just what we are eating, and the cost to our health and to animal welfare of continuing to eat chicken, so I reckon we will start giving the bird a wide berth, and not before time. The big hunt in 1999 will be for Real Chicken, and folk will pay any price for a bird which enjoyed a happy, healthy life.