It’s the time when newspapers, magazines and websites make predictions about next year. No one ever checks back on these predictions to see how accurate they were, which is is just as well because they almost certainly weren’t. Let’s face it, if the future was that predictable we’d all be millionaires sitting in the sun, not sitting in the office bashing out filler copy in the week after Christmas. Bitter, moi? Not at all.

So food predictions for next year:

Burgers

The number of  burger places  in London will reach critical mass and every Londoner will have a’steak’ (geddit) in at least one. This means the burger restaurants will actually be selling burgers to each other and obesity levels will peak alarmingly. There will then be a massive crash and only McDonalds will be left in business, its customer base having never gone away.  Articles will then be written by people saying they never liked burgers, ironically these will be the same people who’bloody loved’ them twelve months previously.

American Casual Dining

This will be exposed a cunning plot to sell us boring junk food at a high markup without the need to employ costly chefs, just monkeys armed with a fish slice and enough sense not to sit on the grill.  Ribs, shakes, fried chicken, pulled pork and all the other things that made America and Americans huge will all be ceremoniously tipped over Beachy Head and the NHS will breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Street Food

People will become exhausted at blowing on the embers of the trendy fire that refused to start and admit that, while it’s very nice to eat delicious food in the street  in Hanoi, Bangkok and Cairo, it doesn’t really work in Chingford. Two chaps called James cooking festival food on a gas fired BBQ in a gazebo borrowed from their parents is just not the same and even Radio London will move on to something else.

Pizzas

Their time will now come, mostly because there’s very little else left to’reboot’. Unlike American food, pizza does require a bit of skill to do well and the first mouthful is not exactly the same as the last. Some idiots will try putting stupid toppings on, like prawns, but real fans will treat that with the contempt it deserves. Tomato, anchovies, salamis, mozzarella, pepper and chillis are the only proper candidates for plonking on a pizza.

Noodles

After briefly peaking around Easter, noodles will revert once more to being the food you eat while your X-Box restarts. Claims of noodles’ power to cure hangovers will be proven wrong and the nation will return to the only guaranteed hangover cure, a bacon sandwich.

Bacon sandwiches

Savvy restaurateurs will open bacon sandwich shops across London offering a choice of sour dough, focaccia and ciabatta breads enclosing hand-reared pot belly pig rashers and artisan tomato ketchup. Charging five times the price of the local caff, they will find themselves in demand to write’‘My perfect bacon sandwich’ features for the broadsheets.

Cameras

Canon will bring out the Blogmatic  X1 camera which will only be able to focus on one plane at a time, so ensuring correctly out of focus backgrounds. 

Rumours on tec forums suggest it will have optional ego enhancement choice settings of Epic and Amazeballs, and a new Passive Bragging â„¢ feature allowing it to auto Tweet’Can’t wait to go to XXXX  tonight’. Optional modules of’Looking forward to going to XXXX tonight’ and’Thanks XXXX  for an amayyyyzing meal last night’ will be available for power Passive Braggers, TV chefs, chocolatiers and Z list celebs

And so as 2013 looms like a looming thing, full of promise and even more lists of best ofs and worst ofs remember a meal is not just a meal, it’s a style statement.