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New on the Menu

Articles on new and innovative food and beverage items trending across the independent restaurant landscape

New on the Menu: Matzoh brittle and a hot chicken ice cream sandwich

Plus a cocktail celebrating D.C.’s cherry blossom festival, an oyster BLT and Greg Baxtrom’s version of a wagyu burger

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

March 26, 2021

5 Slides
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Matzoh, the usually unflavored cracker that is required eating for observant Jews during the 8-day holiday of Passover, is sometimes called “the bread of affliction,” and its crumbly dryness is a reminder of the hardships of the Hebrews’ flight to freedom from slavery in Egypt when, with no time to allow for their bread to rise, it baked on their backs as they fled in the hot desert sun. But it doesn’t have to be bad, as chef Mica Talmor of Pomella in Oakland, Calif., demonstrates by coating hers in caramel and chocolate.

Washington D.C.’s cherry blossom festival is in full swing and bartender Thomas Martinez of The Bombay Club is celebrating with a pink, floral version of the Gimlet.

In San Antonio, chef Steve McHugh of Cured restaurant is enhancing the classic BLT by adding fried oysters to it, and in Brooklyn, N.Y.,, Greg Baxtrom brings Japanese elements of soy sauce, ginger and shiitake mushrooms to his wagyu burger at Maison Yaki.

And finally, iniBurger, which has two locations in the San Francisco Bay area, has been adding large scoops of vanilla ice cream to its Nashville hot chicken sandwiches for a while now, possibly as a dare or a joke, and offering it as a secret menu item. It has been such a hit that it has earned a permanent place on the menu, priced the same as its regular Nashville hot chicken sandwich, although that sandwich has coleslaw and the version with ice cream doesn’t.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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