4 trending cuisines to watch in 2025

Balkan food

Balkan cuisine will also continue getting people excited in 2025, with more and more people trying out this diverse cuisine at home. Irina Janakievska’s recently launched cookbook The Balkan Kitchen was a treasure trove of recipes and stories celebrating the region, and award-winning writer Irina Georgescu will release a new book, Danube, in early 2025, exploring the diverse cuisine of countries including Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria. Restaurant Kinkally is named after a Georgian local dish called khinkali (a dumpling with a striking, twisted form, traditionally filled with beef, pork or lamb and a touch of parsley), and also pulls in influences from across the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Spasia Dinkovski, also known as Mystic Burek, has a new space called Kafana, from which she’ll be celebrating Balkan cuisine in her own unique and delicious way later in the year.

Brazilian food

Brazilian chef Janaína Torres, aka Lady Jaguar, was named World’s Best Female Chef in 2024 and has brought Brazilian cuisine fully into the spotlight. Her Sao Paulo restaurant A Casa do Porco is making waves around the world with its pork-focused menu, while her traveling pop-up À Brasileira is a celebration of Brazilian gastronomic culture, heritage and innovation.

Terra Brasilis food market stall in Chelsea, London, has been capturing the attention of foodies with its flavourful feijoada (bean and pork stew), Brazilian steak sandwiches with homemade chilli sauce, moqueca (aromatic seafood stew) and bolo de mandioca (cassava and coconut cake). Little Piece of Bahia from chef Maria do Carmo Vargas Souza has also been catching the attention of gourmands in Manchester, specialising in ‘authentic regional Brazilian soul food’. Its menu of exciting dishes includes acarajé fritters, made with black-eyed peas, fresh onions and garlic, caruru, a classic Brazilian dish of okra, fresh onions, smoked prawns and toasted nuts, carne-de-sol, a dish of salted sun-dried meat, and bobo de camarão – a chowder-like dish of shrimp in a purée of cassava, coconut milk and herbs. It will also be popping up regularly in London’s Brick Lane in 2025. Maroto in London is a new Brazilian-influenced fine-dining restaurant with dishes like 24-hour slow-cooked pork belly with tutu de feijão & piccalilli; and bone marrow with guava glazed short rib, tapioca pancake & cashew cream.

Discover some of our favourite Brazilian recipes, from picanha to caipirinhas.

Japanese food

Tim Anderson’s latest cookbook, Hokkaido: Recipes from the Seas, Fields and Farmlands of Northern Japan, has sparked an interest in the nuances of regional Japanese cuisines; and the recent opening of Ichikokudo Hokkaido Ramen in London’s Soho is also celebrating the Japanese island’s cuisine and ingredients – with its signature ramen enriched with bonito, mackerel, shiitake stock and Hokkaido-sourced kelp for added umami. Recently opened restaurant Hotori is specialising in ‘beak-to-tail Japanese yakitori’ with dishes like tsukune (grilled and glazed chicken meatball with aged tare sauce and soy cured egg yolk), and Negima (chicken thigh with spring onions bathed in chicken fat).

Tokyo- and London-based Millie Tsukagoshi’s upcoming book, Umai: Recipes From a Japanese Home Kitchen, will be filled with izakaya-style small plates, no-frills hole-in-the-wall teishokuya dishes and local Japanese bakery delights. And Japanese-American-Londoner Kenji Morimoto’s upcoming cookbook, Ferment, is set to be a masterclass in fermentation – and one of the most hotly anticipated cookbooks of 2025! Kenji was in charge of making tsukemono (Japanese pickles) for family gatherings as a child, learning from the elders to recreate flavours of home. Many recipes in the outstanding new book have a Japanese third-culture leaning, like one-pot citrus miso salmon and edamame rice, and miso peanut butter kimchi noodles, while others are a global cornucopia of pickling and fermenting, like kimchi fennel sausage rolls, kimchi chicken masala and pickled fruit tart with goat's cheese.

We've got plenty of easy Japanese recipes to try, from homemade gyoza and chicken yakitori to comforting ramen.