Forbes Names Vegan Dining Top 10 Food Trend of 2013

Forbes magazine just released its Top 10 Food Trends of 2013, and there’s exciting news worth sharing: “high-end vegan” dining not only made the list — but it’s featured in the number one spot!

According to this esteemed business magazine, which started publishing its food trends list in 2011, the decisions for the top ten hinge on observations and comments of food writers, chefs, restaurateurs, and food educators from across the country. It largely credits the rise in plant-based “eating plans” to the increasing interest in improving our health, noting that “this is why it will have more staying power.”

Chef Tal Ronnen’s star-studded Crossroads restaurant in Beverly Hills was highlighted for catering to celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Ellen DeGeneres. Chef Matthew Kenney of raw-focused M.A.K.E. in Santa Monica was also noted for his photogenic dishes and adjoined cooking school.

The article is swift to point out that this trend is not limited to the West Coast, and that even Chef Jose Huber of the Amway Hotel Collection in Grand Rapids, Mich. goes vegan for an entire month each year in order to taste test recipes such as cauliflower steak.

All this recognition for vegan food comes on the heels of an October 21 cover story in Nation’s Restaurant News, a leading trade publication,  highlighting the “broadening appeal” of meat-free fare. That article remarked that chefs are seeing “customers take a shine to vegetarian dishes,” and both large and small food chains are “pushing the limits of vegetarian fare.”