One of the bubble tea kits that was a fad for a while in our house. Photo: Kellie O’Brien.
When putting in the weekly Woolies order or hitting the shops, the requests from our two teenage daughters have become so obscure that I spend as much time Googling the ingredients as I do buying them.
I blame it squarely on TikTok food fads.
I’ll admit, I don’t remember there being fads around food as a kid, unless you include the introduction of Roll Ups to school lunch boxes and red plastic on kids’ teeth.
At a stretch, I could probably say taking a few Coke bottles to the corner shop and trading them in for a 10 cent bag of mixed lollies was about as obsessive as we got over food in the early years.
By late primary school and with no McDonalds restaurants in Tasmania (yet), the new craze for one of my friends was flying to Melbourne to “stock up” on this thing called Maccas, bring it home and put it in the freezer.
I can only imagine what a reheated frozen Big Mac tasted like.
In years gone by, our girls became giddy over bubble tea. If we didn’t buy one from the many bubble tea stands at the shops, then we bought at-home kits.
That phase came as quickly as it went and we now still have a box or two of bubble tea in the back of the pantry.
Now, the replacement is strawberry mocha, which I had to Google to figure out what that was.
Apparently, it’s a sweet, caffeinated drink that tastes like a chocolate covered strawberry thanks to mixing things such as espresso, chocolate sauce and strawberry syrup. Or jam. Hmm, not sure about jam in my drink.
Speaking of chocolate, another viral food is the Dubai chocolate bar. What’s wrong with a bit of Cadbury Fruit and Nut, people?
The answer, I’m told, is the filo pastry and pistachio-tahnini cream inside the chocolate.
Fads around acai bowls and turmeric lattes by the super healthy are apparently dying out, probably because they’ve turned their attention to eating Dubai chocolate.
While on desserts, we’ve all seen the line-ups at the Yo-Chi frozen yoghurt store and wondered what all the fuss was about.
Tell me there’s a difference between that and the pack of frozen yoghurts in my freezer.
The eldest daughter tells me there’s a few new fads appearing and, if you’re one of those people who needs to be ahead of the curve, now is the time to jump on them.
The first is Birria tacos, a Mexican street food with slow-cooked meat in a tortilla and served with a broth for dipping.
In my day, we called that soup and sandwiches at nan’s bowls club, complete with slow-cooked silverside in your sanger.
Next is the Sushi Push Pop, with a dedicated store opening recently in Sydney.
The crux of this fad is that a cylinder push-up container with your sushi in it replaces having to use chopsticks.
In some cases, you can even pour soy sauce down a pusher tube, before pushing the sushi out the top.
All sounds rather sophisticated.
Considering my love for sushi and lack of chopsticks skills, I may just be able to get behind this one.
The final one is called the caviar fad, where fish eggs once reserved for luxury catering have now driven food mashups on TikTok and are put on, well, everything.
Their use ranges from “bumps”, where caviar is placed on the back of your hand, licked off, then followed with a shot of vodka, through to “high-low pairings”, where premium caviar is teamed with cheap comfort foods such as McDonalds Chicken Nuggets.
Meanwhile, as a farm kid, the most adventurous I got was in all the different ways I could have potatoes – baked, mashed, boiled, fried, scalloped …
As I make this joke to my daughter, she remembers how “flights” are also another craze right now – sample-sized portions of the same food. My guess is there’s likely a potato flight going off on TikTok somewhere.
It makes you wonder exactly where food crazes are going to end up.
All I know is that if they ever start a craze where you grow your own vegetables in the backyard, peel them, boil them and serve with a bit of butter and a pinch of salt, then I’ll be on trend.
Original Article published by Kellie O’Brien on Region Illawarra.
