LEILA FADEL, HOST:
If you like sour cherry, pucker up - it's one of the foods and flavors predicted to be trendy in 2025, as NPR's Neda Ulaby reports.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Industry groups, famous chefs and trend watchers have picked sour cherry, pistachio and briny flavors as hot for 2025. And when it comes to eating out, expect to see mucho masa.
CONRADO RIVERA: Masa is present all across the menu.
ULABY: Conrado Rivera runs a popular food stall in Los Angeles called Komal, with his wife. Recently, it was named one of LA's most exciting new restaurants by the website Eater. Masa is ground corn dough, the basis of corn tortillas and tamales. It's treated with an alkaline agent like lime in a process called nixtamalization. Komal is just one of many acclaimed masa-focused restaurants now open around the country.
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ULABY: On TikTok, people gleefully document meals at Tatemo in Houston, that just got a Michelin star. At these artisanal restaurants like Komal, Conrado Rivera and his wife, chef Fatima Juarez, make masa from heirloom corn they buy exclusively from small family farmers.
FATIMA JUAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
RIVERA: Where the masa comes from - some of the varieties come from Puebla or Oaxaca or Yucatan.
ULABY: And it comes in a rainbow of colors.
JUAREZ: Blue, yellow and pink.
RIVERA: White.
JUAREZ: And white.
RIVERA: Brown.
JUAREZ: Brown.
RIVERA: Red.
JUAREZ: Red.
ULABY: Food & Wine magazine is one of the places that says masa is having a moment. I asked the owners of Komal if they found it slightly silly or strange to label an ancient culinary staple a trend.
RIVERA: No (laughter). No. I mean, we love being part of it. We are happy to promote it worldwide.
ULABY: And hopefully, Conrado Rivera says, the attention will help preserve strains of corn that support fragile ecosystems and introduce more North Americans to the greatness of fresh and fluffy masa, a trendy food for 2025 and for thousands of years before this one.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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