"Like chicken with taste" is the way Rheal Cayer of specialty poultry supplier Grimauld Farms describes guinea fowl, a game bird native to Africa we're seeing with increasing frequency on restaurant menus. In San Francisco, we've munched guinea hen "hot pockets" (turnovers) at Teague Moriarty and Matt McNamara's Sweet Woodruff. Across the bay in Oakland, we loved a recent special of guinea hen in spicy Thai red curry at James Syhabout's Hawker Fare. Also in Oakland, Oliveto chef Jonah Rhodehamel was offering a guinea hen special in March, a breast stuffed with the bird's leg, dried cherries, and sage sausage, roasted in its own skin and served with a brandy and duck liver sauce. Oliveto's guinea hens, by the way, were from a flock the restaurant received after the birds did some insect-control work at a Napa winery.

Guinea fowl are famous insect-munchers, and handy to have around a farm, Cayer notes. "Farmers who have cattle will get guineas to go after bugs in the feed."

Unlike chickens, guinea fowl can fly, which makes them unsuitable as backyard birds. But that ability to go mobile makes them interesting to eat, since exercise gives their meat flavor and color. The breast of a guinea hen (male guinea fowl are almost indistinguishable from females, so "hen" refers to both sexes) is pinkish, the leg meat bluish. Both have a stronger, gamier flavor than chicken.

It's pricier than chicken, too. A guinea hen tops out at about 3 pounds, half the size of a full-grown chicken. And guinea fowl grow relatively slowly—compared to a chicken, it takes about twice as long to raise a guinea hen to optimal size, which explains why it costs more. Maybe that's why, until recently, guinea hens haven't been terribly popular in the U.S.

Or maybe it's the name. In France, where guinea hen is a traditional Sunday roast, it's called pintade; in Italy, faraona. But some Americans tend to think of guinea pigs when they see the name. That mental association with rodents just might keep guinea hen from ever being a beloved supermarket bird. Chefs, however, have already been smitten by the guinea.

Image source: Flickr member Guinea Fowl Flock under Creative Commons

Used to be that if you ate beef tongue at all—in deli sandwiches or lengua tacos from a truck—it was because it was cheap. But lately, chefs in upscale restaurants across America's cities have reconsidered tongue, putting its velvet texture and concentrated beef flavor to work in a variety of dishes.

At ink.sack in West Hollywood, Michael Voltaggio makes corned beef tongue the star in his remake of the Reuben, while at The Gorbals in downtown LA, Chef Ilan Hall slow-braises tongue into a meaty confit that is served with romesco, a Spanish sauce made from almonds, tomatoes, and bell peppers. Meanwhile, in New York City's sprawling Italian food hall Eataly, Chef Michael Toscano serves warm calf's tongue with potatoes, leeks, and Barbaresco at Manzo.

In Chicago, Longman & Eagle chef Jared Wentworth features tongue in a hash with black truffles. Across town at Girl & the Goat, Stephanie Izard braises beef tongue and serves it with a vinaigrette made from Dijon mustard, pickle brine, and beef fat. And at San Francisco's Alembic, Chef Ted Fleury garnishes beef tongue sliders with wild arugula and fried green tomato pickles.

Turns out the biggest challenge with tongue might not be making it delicious, but getting squeamish restaurant diners to order it. "It's one of those things that people are kind of turned off on because they don’t quite get it," says Aaron Rocchino, a longtime Chez Panisse cook who recently opened The Local Butcher Shop, a whole-beast meat shop in Berkeley, California. "It’s easy to find subpar tongue, but when it’s thought of more like an ingredient rather than just something to use up, people are surprised by how good it is."

Image source: CHOW.com

Hibiscus has a beautiful color and a fruity/floral flavor with an addictive bitter edge, much like a cranberry. As befits its traditional use as a cooling beverage, it's usually found in iced tea, punch, or Mexican aguas frescas. But it's been creeping onto cocktail menus too, like at Manhattan's Apothéke, which serves a Five Points with hibiscus, bitters, grape juice, and sugarcane-infused rum, and at D.C.'s Café Atlántico, where the Old Man & the Sea blends hibiscus-infused rum with lime and is served with um, hibiscus air. Look, I didn't write the cocktail menu.

Hibiscus has also been showing up in desserts of late. Whackadoo San Francisco ice cream shop Humphry Slocombe made a hibiscus-beet sorbet in March; "Whole hibiscus flowers and oven-roasted beets just b*tch slapped all other sorbets," writes the gleeful sorbet-maker on Slocombe's Twitter feed. New York restaurant Per Se's $295 vegetable tasting menu has a hibiscus dessert option too: the "White Hibiscus" has hibiscus jelly gluing together layered cakes, with sweetened hibiscus foam on the side and a candied hibiscus leaf atop a puff of crème fraîche sherbet.

Image source: Flickr member okano under Creative Commons

Ashes from burnt food, wood, or hay are being put on food (and food is being cooked directly in hot ashes) at upscale restaurants around the country, but this trend is not some last-ditch attempt to salvage burnt food. The chefs who are using it—mostly inspired by René Redzepi of Denmark's Noma (a.k.a. "the best restaurant in the world")—say it adds bitter and smoky flavors to their dishes. And the culinary use of ash isn't quite as out there as it sounds: Ash has long been used in ancient food preparations by Native Americans, and in traditional Scandinavian foods like lutefisk and preserved herring—where, Redzepi says, he got the idea in the first place.

Spotted a few weeks ago at the modern Cal-Moroccan restaurant Aziza in San Francisco as a jet black garnish sprinkled on chestnut soup. The ashes were crunchy, a little like chewing smoked coffee grounds. Also spotted at Castagna in Portland, Oregon, where Chef Matt Lightner makes hay ash, then purées it with olive oil, rubs it on black cod, and leaves it to cure for a week, before smoking the fish (using more hay) and slicing it.

At Gilt in New York City, Executive Chef Justin Bogle chars onion hearts until they are black and purées them with honey to serve with beef strip loin. The dish is garnished with onion ash, which takes about six or seven hours to fully burn. Bogle freely admits that part of the appeal is how cool ashes look on a plate aesthetically.

In Chilhowie, Virginia, at the Town House, Executive Chef John B. Shields burns eggplants into ash, which is served with lamb in a presentation that looks like an installation art piece (see photo). His dish also includes sifted wood ashes from the restaurant's wood-fired grill, and the lamb itself gets about a 30-second stint directly in the hot ashes and embers after being cooked sous vide. Shields sees the ash trend as part of the fine-dining pendulum swinging back from the chemical manipulations of food that hit big around 2000. "Now it's settling into a groove of taking natural elements [like ash] and then using some modern technique to push the envelope."

Over this summer in San Francisco, Chef Joshua Skenes went so far as to install an eight-foot wood-burning hearth at Saison. He recently served a dish with leeks, Vidalia onions, and wild onions that had been buried directly in the hot ashes to cook. "Fire is the purest form of flavor," he says. "I'm at a point now where I want to strip down the whole restaurant and build a giant fire pit and cook everything over it."

Nobody likes to be caught with their pants down, thinking that sushi is cool when it’s clearly not anymore, or making a big deal about whoopie pies or, God forbid, cupcakes after the time to make a big deal about those things has passed. (Go ahead and flame us! We are so shallow!) But for those who would like to know which food trends are officially passé, which are about to be, and which are about to hit big, we’re here to give you the goods. Here's what you will, and won't, be eating in the new year.

Bao buns. Tiki drinks. Red velvet cake doughnuts. Milk. Milk?

Yeah, you heard right. The second most elemental beverage known to man—that thing that formerly only kids drank—has taken a star turn. Suddenly, milk is an "it" food.

There’s a milk bar in the Chelsea Market in New York City. This summer, Eleven Madison Park was serving a big snowball of frozen milk filled with honey. WD-50 and Spot Dessert Bar were doing evaporated milk ice cream, and Momofuku Milk Bar was selling cereal milk–flavored soft serve.

It isn’t surprising that ice cream and other desserts contain milk, but rather that chefs now see milk as a dish’s selling point. Consider that five years ago everybody was saying they were lactose intolerant, ordering soy lattes, and—when they were eating dairy—always eating nonfat everything.

So what caused milk’s transformation from demonized fluid to designer ingredient? First there were the wedge dairy products. In August, Tasting Table reported on the ubiquity of yogurt on menus: from Blackbird in Chicago’s almond-infused version to a cold-smoked variety at Seattle’s Spur Gastropub. Small-batch, high-end ice cream has been on the ascendancy for a few years: At the recent Eat Real Festival in Oakland, California, I counted six different vendors. The New York Times revealed that the latest adult beverage trend is alcoholically spiked milk shakes. And of course who doesn’t love fancy cheese?

But milk has the added benefit of being associated with a cool, underground movement. Encouraged by groups like the Weston A. Price Foundation, raw, unpasteurized milk has spiked in popularity. It’s illegal to buy and sell commercially in many states, and where it is legal, retailers often don’t want to assume the risk. (In March of this year, Whole Foods pulled it from their shelves in four states.)

But renegade retailers like Rawesome Foods in Venice, California (busted in July), have sold it under the counter. And you can join raw milk collectives that skirt local prohibitions by buying direct from farms. Though science is inconclusive, raw milk’s acolytes believe it builds one’s immune system, heals skin problems, and is nothing short of a superfood.

Raw Is Sexy

At new San Francisco restaurant Commonwealth, there’s a dessert called the White Russian: coffee ice cream, vodka gelée, génoise cake, and raw milk mousse.

“We find raw milk a little bit sexy,” says Chef Jason Fox.

Despite milk's ascendancy on menus as a star ingredient, there aren’t too many restaurants promoting it as a stand-alone beverage. No milk flights or milk pairings. (At least none that I could find.) But in the coffeehouse world—most adults consume the largest quantities of milk in coffee—the beans aren't the only thing people are paying attention to.

For the past two years, Portland, Oregon's Coffeehouse Northwest has been creating a custom milk blend for their cappuccinos: a quarter Sunshine Dairy brand conventional whole milk mixed with three-quarters Organic Valley brand whole milk.

“We find that the Organic Valley gives more of a preferable taste but has a more buttery mouthfeel and doesn’t quite steam as well,” says barista Calvin Young.

The coffeehouse proudly advertises the fact that it uses the more expensive milk in its signature drink, and offers consumers the option to pay 50 cents to get the fancy blend in other types of espresso drinks. (Significantly, says Young, few choose to.)

When it opens next week, San Francisco restaurant The Summit will allow customers to choose between espresso drinks made with conventional local Clover milk or those made with Straus, a boutique, local organic whole milk, for a 25- to 50-cent up-sell (prices have not been finalized). At retail, a gallon of Straus typically runs at least 80 cents more than the conventional version.

“We’re hoping that customers will realize the difference the Straus milk makes,” says Chef Eddie Lau.

There are echoes in the coffee industry’s tentative steps toward more expensive, fancy milk of grass-fed beef in the mid-2000s. Anna Kharbas, manager of foodservice sales at Straus Family Creamery, says she remembers a San Francisco restaurant at that time offering a similar deal: Buy a conventional steak at one price or a grass-fed steak for a few dollars more.

Could it be we are close to seeing a day when adults shamelessly order tall glasses of frosty milk with their dinners and listen to a sommelier expound upon the beverage’s unique terroir?

And why not? Milk pairs well with food. Except artichokes.

Photograph by Chris Rochelle