Insta made me eat this

Which came first: The chicken or the egg? More importantly, where did you see a trending food first: Online or on a menu? All this year, our feeds have overflowed with cloud bread, Dubai chocolate and matcha this, matcha that.

- Christalle Fernandes

We thought the Great Dalgona Challenge of 2020 was a onetime viral obsession. It was only the starting point. Now, we're seeing accordion potatoes, kunafa cheesecake, jiggly pancakes, flying noodles, freakshakes, wobbly capybara pana cottas, cube croissants and heaven knows what else on our feed. They’ve popped up on Indian menus too, right at the height of their internet fame. It means that in the kitchens, great minds are tracking every trend and turning it into a #YouHaveToTryThis moment. It doesn’t always work. But when it does: Ka-ching!

Screen test

Earlier this year, as jiggly milk puddings and pana cotta in animal shapes gave everyone cute aggression, confectioners were watching closely. Kolkata restaurant Boulevard added wobbly capybaras and cat puddings to their menu. Then, when cloud coffee – a coconut-water espresso with frothy foam – went viral, nearly every trendy café put it on the menu.

This isn’t as easy as see-and-do. Viral videos typically show the final product, or an elegant (but unhelpful) montage of how it was prepared. So, a chef who wants to add the item to the menu must attempt some careful reverse engineering. Tarak Bhattacharya’s consumer insights team at Mad Over Donuts knew, back in January, that the hype around Dubai chocolate was worth cashing in on. They worked quickly, testing their own version, and within 40 days, they'd rolled out a Dubai Chocolate donut across their 140 stores. “We observed a clear ‘come specifically for the trend’ behaviour,” he says. “Guests added it first when they ordered it on the app, and asked for it at the counter.”