The Got Your Goat sandwich at The Fancy Biscuit (Photo by Jay Paul)
1. Secret Menus: Sea Greens and Poke
$11 at East Coast Provisions
Richmond doesn’t have a poke-focused restaurant yet, but you can sweetly ask your server here for this off-menu, Hawaiian comfort food: sushi-grade tuna poke with wakame (sea greens are the new kale, after all), wasabi emulsion, soy and scallions tumbled over sushi rice.
2. Sweet-and-Savory Gluten
$6 to $7.59 at The Fancy Biscuit
We’ll see the marriage of savory and sugar riding hard this year, in all things — pasta, pizza and especially in biscuits. Try the Got Your Goat with fried chicken, goat cheese and pepper jelly, and the Salty Pig with country ham and caramel sauce.
3. Mocktails and Vegetarian Plates
Various Prices at The Daily Kitchen & Bar
Richmond Restaurant Group, also behind No. 1 on this list, has trends down! The Daily nails center-of-the-plate veggies such as the vegan calamari — fried rings of hearts of palm — or the meaty, nutty veggie burger, and virgin drinks. Begin 2017 with an alcohol-free mojito.
4. Bowls and Early-A.M. Chocolate
$7.50 at The Pit and the Peel
Bowl foods were big in 2016 and are still relevant, whether it be ramen or a stack of superfoods such as an acai and almond milk smoothie crowned with dark chocolate. Plus, dark chocolate in the morning brings mental clarity, according to one Tel Aviv University study.
5. Halal Meat, Goat and Turmeric
$17 at Taste of India
The bone broth fascination has ebbed, leaving a big trend-hole to fill. Enter goat, with more interstitial collagen than your average butcher’s broth. Order the goat curry “Indian-spiced” and load up on turmeric, an au courant root touted for its healing properties.
