After the Shift: National Restaurant Association Show 2026

We spend a lot of time thinking about what's next in flavor. So when Chef and Spiceologist Christian Gill hit the floor of the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, we knew we'd be hearing from him. Here's his After the Shift report — where the industry is, where it's heading, and why we're paying close attention.

A Chef's Aside

McCormick Place Convention Center. Chicago, Illinois. Four days. One million square feet of food, beverage, equipment, and — worth mentioning — footwear for food service workers, which is a burgeoning category again as mainstream consumer brands continue to create skidproof offerings for us to wear in the back of house. Enough vegan dairy alternatives to stock a small nation, and more matcha than should legally exist in one zip code at one time.

Welcome to the National Restaurant Association Show. Not that NRA. The hangry one. The one that smells like grilled proteins, food safe mechanical lubricant, and cheese. It is the single largest F&B industry gathering of food, machines, and technological innovation — and if you weren’t here, somebody else is taking notes so you don't have to be.

I'm Chef Christian Gill, Chef and Spiceologist. I walked every hall, every aisle, and covered every booth in the building so you don't have to. This is my After the Shift report.

Grab a milk crate, sit on the table top at table 12 until the GM yells at you, and make sure you sweep under the front lowboy, whoever closed last night is a toddler (probably me).

Umami is back. It never left, we just stopped listening.

Let me lead with the thing I was most personally invested in watching unfold across the floor: umami. Not as a buzzword. Not as the thing your local fast casual is going to put on a menu board next to "elevated" and "house-crafted." Umami flavors are actively re-establishing their rightful place as a culinary flavor powerhouse in your arsenal — the everyday taste and sensory  building block that makes our dining experiences genuinely memorable instead of just technically present.

Black garlic is coming up from the rear efficiently in liquid and powdered forms that allow you to skip the process of creating it in your kitchen. It's not performing. It is not doing what truffles do every five years — arriving loud, landing on everything, and eventually wearing out its welcome until the next rediscovery cycle. Black garlic showed up this year like a seasoned professional who's stopped needing the room's approval: versatile and available in more formats than most operators realize.

Liquid applications from Asian vendors — particularly adjacent to plant-based ramen soup bases that deserve their own dedicated conversation — were delivering on black garlic in compelling ways. Powdered black garlic was simultaneously being positioned by multiple purveyors as a high-impact, low-effort tool for operators who don't have the time or labor to finesse, but still want to deliver something that genuinely hits.

This is Spiceology's neighborhood. If you are not watching how black garlic powder is being positioned for commercial kitchen use right now, start watching. The first-mover window on this specific application is closing faster than people think. Just remember, this is an exponential flavor factor and will quickly overpower dish concepts like truffle oils. I know we don’t always love to, but exercising restraint is the best bet.

The dairy-free movement (still in progress but getting louder and finding broader applications to present themselves in)

Dairy-free alternatives have been continually rebranding for the better part of a decade, and the NRA floor suggests the effort is gaining genuine texture — no pun intended. The category is growing with the millennial generation and becoming evermore approachable with Gen Z. Flavors are less apologetic. Formulations are more sophisticated. There's a self-awareness in the space now that wasn't there a few years ago — an acknowledgment that the category needs to earn its seat at the table rather than just demand it. From butter alts (I can’t believe it’s carrot based… no really I can’t), to prepackaged c-store and quick service iced plant cream (oops I meant Dairy-Free) sweets, it was clear at NRA their goal is to be accessible in everything we eat.

Whether it shows up as strong in 2027 is a question for next year's show. But it showed up this year actually trying, and in this industry, that counts for something.

Cultivated Beef: Alright… you’re here. We get it.

They're calling it cultivated beef now. Not lab-grown. Cultivated. This is not a coincidence. Whoever made that call in the marketing meeting deserves real credit, because the language shift is carrying significant weight — softening the science, leaning into agricultural framing, making the whole proposition feel more familiar and less clinical.

Whether the product ultimately backs up the rebrand is a longer conversation. But in food, what you call something matters almost as much as what it tastes like. That reframe is worth watching. NRA goers quickly walked past the booths and moved on to the Chef’s Warehouse, Michael’s Finer, Halperns, and other high-quality meat purveyors showcasing the real thing.

Seed oils vs non seed oils: The Fryer Wars (should be a Coheed and Cambria album)

The no-seed-oil movement arrived at the NRA floor with reinforcements this year, and for once, those reinforcements have genuine culinary merit. Fruit oils — not just avocado, which has already had its cultural moment and is now living amongst our kitchen pantries — were earning legitimate commercial showcase space. New entrants in that family are positioning themselves specifically for commercial frying applications, challenging the seed oil default that has dominated foodservice for cost and smoke point reasons for decades.

Here's what makes this interesting beyond the wellness angle: this conversation is becoming flavor-motivated. When operators start asking what an oil is adding to the dish rather than just what it's doing functionally, that is an opening. Our request in the industry for minimal or no flavor transference has been heard.  At Spiceology, we know to pay attention to those openings when you all ask for flavor balance.

THC Beverages: The category that stopped waiting for permission

The beverage section made one thing clear: THC beverages are no longer a trend to monitor — they're a category to contend with. The floor was dominated by them, and the products themselves have matured considerably. Flavor execution is sharper. Formats are more commercial-ready. These aren't wellness-aisle curiosities anymore.

They want bar placement. They want menu real estate. They want to be treated as the beverage category they have, by most measurable standards, already become.

Operators who aren't thinking about where this lands on their menus yet are going to be thinking about it soon. It will continue to be left up to each state’s legal framework around the enjoyment and use of THC.

Single-Item Concept Brands

One of the structurally most interesting things on the floor this year wasn't any single product — it was the unmistakable expansion of versatility within single-item concept brands. Companies that started with one ingredient, one obsession, one specific thing, and chose to go deeper instead of broader. Ginger in a hundred different commercial formats from gummies to prepared coulis to dehydrated garnish. Matcha staking out real estate across multiple categories in response to the consumer social media onslaught of matcha in everything as if it hasn’t been around for CENTURIES. Banana as a genuine culinary anchor, not a novelty play.

The lesson isn't subtle: consumers and operators are responding to depth and breadth. They want the brand that knows one thing completely, not the brand that knows twelve things adequately. For anyone in the flavor industry, that framing deserves serious consideration.

Portability and the pub food punch up

Portable format foods remain a loud and growing conversation on the floor, particularly for bar and pub-adjacent programs. The egg roll has become MORE of a vessel for global flavor exploration — familiar formats being loaded with unexpected combinations and sent out to tables that didn't know they needed them. When it works, it's genuinely smart menu design. The format earns its versatility. Asian vendors are watching their American accounts and consumers continue to put everything in an egg roll paper and figure out how to capitalize on the consumer flavor and concept trends (birria, lobster mac, matcha…).

Mac and cheese continues to be pushed past its traditional limits in ways that are simultaneously exciting and humbling. Comfort food as a creative frontier is a real thing, and operators are leaning into it. Let’s be clear about a few things: those of us who pride ourselves on our scratch kitchens, housemade pantheon of sauces, bases, flavor builders and finishers will not find a bountiful amount of anything pertaining to us. This show has become about efficiency in application with clearer communications on sourcing (in some cases) and what equipment will take up less real estate and be more efficient in our BoH. Our take away is controlled and grounded, we are here for the diamonds in the rough, not prepared potato salad with raisins. 

Artisanal Italian Pasta: The Bronze-cut era (in the states)

I did not walk into McCormick Place expecting artisanal Italian pasta to be one of the most energized categories on the floor. I was wrong, and I was glad to be wrong.

Bronze-cut, high-quality dried pasta. Bronze cut pasta is not new, like matcha, it has been established for a long time but social media has made the education around it more accessible. Bronze-cut extruded pasta has texture, something the commodity dried pasta has never had for expense reasons, and it matters. Texture = Grip and grip = pasta that is infused with saucework rather than the slip and side that commercial restaurants tend to have (when you’re here, you’re here).  The energy around it is being driven in significant part by the “rankings” culture currently running through food media and social. Chefs and creators are producing short, confident, opinionated content about pasta brands — which ones are grocery-aisle filler, which ones belong in a serious kitchen — and it is moving product and building brand equity in ways that feel genuinely new. People are discovering quality differences they didn't know existed before someone put them side-by-side on camera.

Some pasta brands are riding that wave with real thoughtful execution (Barilla Al Bronzo) and the NRA floor reflects the confidence that creates.

The flavor implication is worth noting directly: high-quality pasta wants seasoning that clings to it, not smothered over it. Restraint and precision matter more in this context. Where and how the ingredients are sourced matter.  As the category matures and operators upgrade their pantries, that's a meaningful callout for how we think about application. I mean, we all want a pasta pastry person on staff, hand-making the tortellini and cutting from the bronze extruder like Nonno hand cutting pappardelle for the Sunday sauce. But, that’s ‘SPENSIVE, and even Italians will use these high-quality dried and packaged pasta products. If you don’t have the real-estate and room in your labor budget, Rummo and others have quality products. 

Footnote: Commercial brand shoe crossover (Ha.)

Worth naming: the continued migration of consumer-facing brands into professional foodservice is accelerating. Footwear brands, appliance companies, and others traditionally rooted in the consumer space are expanding into foodservice lines with real commitment. I don’t know that it matters to me if my line cooks all start wearing skid proof, water resistant, Hey-Dudes in the kitchen as long as they get the job done. The boundary between consumer and commercial product development is thinning, and it's doing so quickly. Let’s be real, a 1200 watt consumer induction burner isn’t going to get us anywhere in service compared to a beastly 208-240 volt platform that will NEVER replace a French top stove but will be acceptable if you have the electricity and not the gas. 

For working chefs and operators, this creates both opportunity and noise. Worth being intentional about which side of that equation you're on. 

Closing Time

What the NRA floor tells you every year, if you know how to listen to it, is where the tension lives. Where categories are working to redefine themselves. Where operators are feeling pressure. Where flavors are building real momentum before they arrive at scale and everyone acts like they saw it coming all along. Brands are getting to the relevant flavor and concept trends faster and not getting caught up in paralysis by analysis and three-year stale ham sandwich roll-outs of trends that have died in our kitchens or on the shelf. To succeed as a purveyor selling to Operators, Chefs, Bartenders, and Flavor Makers, they need to make calculated but timely moves on products that support the moment and help the trend to become a staple. If they sit on rapturous flavor and concept trends for a year or more, they vanish by the time it hits the market… but we look at our reps and say ‘wasn’t this popular two years ago?’. 

So, in summary, what you should be paying attention to.

Umami is fundamental in serious innovative and competitive kitchens. Black garlic is again entering kitchens softly and becoming iconic and tactful instead of smothering. Fruit oils are making a credible case to be taken seriously as a high temp food lube and finisher in some instances. THC beverages stopped making cases and started occupying spaces. And somewhere between a well-shot pasta ranking reel and a ginger brand with seventeen SKUs, the next significant thing is already hitting the plate.

At Spiceology, we are always watching. You should be too.

P.S. 

If you want quality conversations on a more intimate level, with approachable and often high-end purveyors with tools we use on a smaller scale from the plate to the pass to our guests, Tilit’s Utility show is where you need to be. Please go. They aren’t out to be edgy, they are speaking to the Chefs, Bartenders, and Flavormakers in our industry that care about sustainability, concise cross-utilization of ingredients, and our staff. Also you may find the Duke’s collab swag there… but probably not because it sold out in two days. (They got me. As a southern boy, that southern-mid-Atlantic collab was a thing of sweet tea beauty.)