Battle Royale 2026

Posted on September 24th, 2026

Battle Royale brought together the champions from Wylam Brewery’s food battles, showcasing winning pizza, curry, and burgers- battling it out to be crowned the ultimate winner. We loved getting to retry our favourite dishes from previous events and return for the showdown!

Champions
1st Place: Lobo Bar Cocina
2nd Place: Square Pizza
3rd Place: Davey’s

Burger Trends
Protein-heavy. Premium. American-inspired. Buns are back.
The Wylam vendors created a protein-packed playground for us foodies! Premiumisation disguised as casual dining ties directly into the emerging steakhouse burger trend: premium beef, thicker patties, glossy soft buns and indulgent toppings, sitting somewhere between fast food and restaurant dining. British Vogue specifically identified steakhouse burgers as a trend for 2026.

40 Ounce – Uncle Elroy Burger
Dry aged 40 patty, American cheese, candied maple bacon crumb, slow-smoked pastrami, Bros. BBQ sauce, creamy peppered mayo in a sweet, seeded milk bun.

Meat:Stack – West Coast Classic
Grill smashed super premium dry-aged North Yorkshire Beef, American cheese, lettuce, signature ‘stack: sauce’, house-made butter pickles, diced onion, ketchup and mustard in a steamed milk bun.

Daveys – New York Beef Rib
Smashed beef patty, American cheese, slow-cooked beef short rib, sticky NYC BBQ glaze, nacho cheese sauce, crispy shoestring fries.

Pizza Trends

The duo trend of buffalo + ranch is particularly strong within food and recognisable to consumers from wings and loaded fries. Pizza is the perfect canvas for novelty through familiar flavour combinations, using contrasting flavours and textures to create balance:

Buffalo + ranch – hot, tangy heat balanced by cool, creamy richness.
Chicken + blue cheese – mild, savoury chicken contrasted with sharp, salty and creamy blue cheese.
Creamy + pickled – rich, indulgent creaminess cut through with sharp acidity and a crunchy bite.

Dou_h and Co – Buffalo Chicken

Buffalo sauce base, for di latte mozzarella, crispy chicken, gorgonzola piccante, pickled red onion, ranch drizzle, fresh chives, pecorino.

Asian Trends

Elevated street food. Chakh Dhoom showed that even classic dishes like butter chicken can be rejuvenated, using smoke to bring depth, char and complexity to a familiar butter chicken, rather than simply making it taste “smoky”. Alongside this, smoke is becoming a flavour driver.

The crispy aloo tikki chaat is a perfect example of how traditional street food is being brought into a more premium dining environment. At its core, it’s a humble crispy potato patty, but the dish is built up by layering texture, flavour and temperatures.

Fat Koreanz – Veggie Dumplings with a soy dipping sauce.

Chakh Dhoom – Smoked Butter Chicken
Inspired by the place where butter chicken was invented: 24-hour marinated, smoked tandoori chicken tikka in creamy and buttery tomato sauce, finished with fenugreek.

Crispy Aloo Tikki Chaat
Crispy potato patty served Delhi-style with chickpeas, spiced potato, sweet yoghurt, homemade tamarind and mint chutney.

If you are looking for culinary trends, insights or inspiration based on the above blog, please get in touch: npdmarkerting@dalziel.co.uk

Meatopia 2026

Posted on September 14th, 2026

Meatopia has always been about celebrating fire, smoke and exceptional meat cookery, but this year’s line-up showcased something more nuanced. Across the menu, chefs fused traditional live-fire cooking with bold global flavours, fermented ingredients, punchy pickles and complex spice profiles. While the cuts, cuisines and techniques varied, there were clear threads linking many of the dishes together.

The Standout Dishes

Korean Bulgogi Lamb Skewer – Alasdair Clark (SOSIJ)

Our favourite dish of the day was undoubtedly the Korean bulgogi lamb skewer! Rather than presenting the lamb as a traditional chunked skewer, thin strips of lamb were layered on top of each other to create an almost kebab-like eating experience. The result was incredibly tender, with plenty of surface area exposed to the grill.

Sweet and savoury bulgogi notes combined with the deep smokiness and char that only live-fire cooking can provide. Green chilli jam brought a gentle heat, while the kimchi added acidity and fermented complexity. A cooling yoghurt element helped tie everything together. It perfectly captured one of the biggest trends visible throughout the event: Asian-inspired flavours meeting primal fire cooking.

Baharat Goat Ribs with Toum – Jad Youssef (Lebnani)

Another highlight was the Baharat-rubbed goat ribs. The goat was rich and succulent, while the Baharat spice blend delivered warmth and aromatic complexity rather than overwhelming heat. The real star, however, was the toum. Fiery with garlic and beautifully sharp, it cut through the richness of the meat and elevated every bite. The pomegranate and black lime molasses added sweet-sour depth, while pickled onions provided freshness.

Cajun Chicken Thigh & Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread – Nick Willoughby & Tessa Harrison (The Black Pig)

The Cajun chicken thigh with jalapeño cheddar cornbread delivered everything you want from Southern-inspired comfort food. The chicken was packed with bold Creole seasoning, while the blackened shrimp added another layer of smoky spice.

The jalapeño cheddar cornbread was a standout accompaniment, balancing sweetness, richness and heat. Habanero chilli jam brought an extra kick, while the remoulade added creaminess and tang. The dish felt indulgent yet balanced and highlighted how Southern US flavours continue to inspire chefs seeking bold, crowd-pleasing flavour combinations.

The Bigger Trends Across Meatopia

Smoke and Char Everywhere

Unsurprisingly, fire remained the hero ingredient throughout the event. Whether it was the bulgogi lamb, smoked pork neck, coffee-rubbed short rib, BBQ oysters or Cajun chicken, chefs consistently used smoke and char as a flavour rather than simply a cooking method. The common theme was allowing fire to build depth and complexity rather than dominate the dish.

Heat with Purpose

Chilli featured across a remarkable number of dishes, but rarely in an aggressive way. Instead, chefs used heat to build layers of flavour. This reflects a broader move towards consumers becoming increasingly flavour-confident and seeking complexity rather than simply spice intensity. Examples included:

Green chilli jam with the bulgogi lamb
Gochujang-marinated pork neck
Sichuan chilli oil in the Balkan kebabs
Habanero chilli jam with the Cajun chicken
Scotch bonnet butter with the pork belly
Pickled chilli with the BBQ oysters
Chilli in the mutton kothu

Pickles, Fermentation and Acidity

One of the strongest flavour threads throughout the menu was the use of fermented and pickled ingredients.

Kimchi, pickled onions, pickled cucumber, pickled chilli, pickled sumac onions and fermented potato flatbread all appeared across multiple dishes. These acidic components balanced the richness of smoked meats and added freshness, crunch and complexity.

Global Barbecue
Perhaps the most exciting theme was the blending of international flavour profiles with British live-fire cooking. Rather than feeling disjointed, these influences were united by the common language of smoke, char and meat cookery.

The menu travelled from:

• Korea (bulgogi, gochujang, kimchi)
• Lebanon (baharat, toum)
• The American South (Cajun, Creole)
• Indonesia (kewpie, pandan)
• Sri Lanka (mutton kothu)
• China (XO sauce, sticky cola duck bao)
• North Africa (merguez)

What made Meatopia so impressive this year was not simply the quality of the cooking, but the convergence of flavour trends. Smoke met fermentation, spice met acidity, and global inspiration met traditional barbecue techniques. Across the event, one thing was clear: the future of barbecue is globally inspired, boldly flavoured and built around layers of smoke, spice and fermentation. Meatopia 2026 delivered all three in abundance.

If you are looking for culinary trends, insights or inspiration based on the above blog, please get in touch: npdmarkerting@dalziel.co.uk

Roost Festival 2026

Posted on September 4th, 2026

Created by WingJam founder Alex and food creator Eating with Tod, ROOST is the evolution of the much-loved WingJam competition, taking things beyond wings to celebrate chicken in all its forms.

Over three days, chefs and traders showcased chicken traditions from across the globe, from South Carolina deep-fried chicken to buttery schnitzels. Every trader brought their own style, technique and story, with one-off dishes created exclusively for ROOST.

It wasn’t just about the chicken. With live competitions, chef demos, music, DJs and a carnival atmosphere, ROOST was a celebration of global food culture.

First up was Ruben’s Reubens – dishes served with a smile! Our marketing team are big-time fans of Ruben, so we were excited to see his concepts live up to the hype.

Chicken Crack – crisp chicken skin with a brilliant savoury crunch, finished with a creamy richness that made it seriously moreish.

Chicken Keema Sausage – a clever way to serve chicken, packed with warm curry flavour and lifted by fresh, tangy onions. Visually, it looked just as good as it tasted.

Peking House

Nashville hot chicken meets Sichuan heat. Eric Huang and his team travelled from their Chinatown restaurant in New York to London, for good reason too, winning the 2nd place award for Critics’ Choice at Roost. Bold, vibrant orange and coated in a light, crisp batter, the Sichuan chilli fried chicken delivered that unmistakable mouth-numbing mala spice. The tenders offered sweetness, spice, and tang with a crispy, vinegary finish from the batter.

Chicken Baptiser

This guy knows a thing or two about foodie theatre! The Chicken Baptiser, aka South Carolina chef Bernard Hardison, owner of BS Dining Experiences, is famous for his dramatic technique of lowering massive batches of heavily seasoned raw chicken into hot oil in the largest fryer in Europe. The wings were fresh from the fryer, tender and had crispy batter. We opted for peach cobbler sauce, which added a sweet cinnamon pairing.

INYUN

Set up by three friends from Brentford, INYUN is a Korean fried chicken, matcha and speciality coffee spot by Kew Bridge in west London.
There’s a lot more to INYUN’s Korean fried chicken than meets the eye. The chicken is given a full 24-hour brine, allowing the seasoning to work deep into the meat. Each piece is fried three times in beer batter, with the heat increasing with every pass. This helps blister the skin, drive out moisture and create the crunch.

The coating is used just for texture purposes: corn starch creates a thin, shattering shell, while vodka helps the batter set quickly without becoming bready. Beer then adds an airy, lacy finish.

Snow Cheese Tenders – the batter was uniquely sweet, with a delicate cheese flavour from the snow cheese. Hands down the best crunch of the day.

House INYUN Wing – deeply savoury with a smoky, slow-building flavour that left a lasting punch of heat.

Coqfighters

Australian-born, London-bred, chicken enthusiasts. With four locations across London, it’s easy to see why they’ve taken off.

Croissant Au Poivre – 10/10 concept! Sandwich filling innovation has long overshadowed the carrier, but things are changing within the market. The croissant concept was buttery and rich from the creamy sauce pairing. The chicken was moreish and perfectly cooked.

Chicken Caesar Wings – the Caesar trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon! Visually vibrant with a delicious fresh aroma, these wings were a nice break from some of the spicier bites we’d had earlier.

Poor Boys

One of the favourites of the day. Poor Boys is a local independent restaurant started by two brothers who were inspired by the city of New Orleans.The chicken came coated in a glossy, buttery buffalo sauce, with a drizzle of cooling blue cheese mayo that balanced the heat perfectly. The batter was crispy, with a delicious savoury depth and umami hit from the beef tallow.

Ginger Wings

By this point, we had consumed a lot of chicken, so the perfect finisher for the day had to be doughnuts. The definition of swavoury, these doughnuts were a unique take on the chicken theme. Oozing with richness from the chicken caramel sauce, the chicken skin topper added a great texture layer and visual. Sweet doughnuts usually get all the attention, but our marketing team are seeing savoury styles cropping up more from social media creatives.