At first glance, Unilever Food Solutions’ Future Menus 2026, held at Foro de Intramuros in Manila last August 8, might feel like just about every other food trade show or event—but it isn’t.
Now on its fourth year, Future Menus 2026 brings together insights from Unilever Food Solutions’ global network of chefs and foodservice operators to identify trends that inspire menus, drive innovation, and generate growth. But the most interesting thing about this year’s edition is that the trends—Culinary Roots, Diner Designed, Street Food Couture and Borderless Cuisine—haven’t changed from last year.
According to Kathleen Huang, Country Marketing Head of Unilever Food Solutions, that’s because real trends don’t just disappear after 12 months. If an insight is genuinely driving growth in the food and beverage industry, then it deserves more than just a moment in the spotlight.
Here are five takeaways from Future Menus 2026.
1. Innovation Starts With Knowing Where You Come From
For Josh Boutwood, the chef and restaurateur behind Helm, the country’s only restaurant with two Michelin Stars, innovation always starts by understanding where you come from. Throughout his talk, he repeatedly challenged the idea that progress in food always means inventing something new.
“Innovation isn’t forgetting the past, it’s understanding it enough to build on it,” he shared on stage.
For Boutwood and the team at Helm, that means looking closer at ingredients and techniques that have long been part of Filipino cooking and finding new ways to express them. And as diners develop an appetite for local and indigenous ingredients, the opportunity may not be to invent a new Filipino identity, but to rediscover, reimagine and build on the one that already exists.
2. The Best Dining Experiences Start With a Feeling
For Maxine and Byran Kong, the husband-and-wife powerhouse behind Kurimu and Michelin-recognized Now Now, every memorable dining experience starts with a question. But instead of asking the age-old query, “Is the customer always right?”, they ask a more meaningful one: “How do we make people feel like they made the right choice?”
It’s a slight, but important shift in perspective that moves the focus beyond the food and onto the emotions that shape how diners experience a restaurant, from what they order to how they’re welcomed, served and made to feel throughout the entire meal.
Remember: diners can forget the details of a meal, but they’ll always remember how a restaurant made them feel.
3. The Street Knows What Diners Want
Some of the most powerful culinary ideas don’t come from formal kitchens or fancy, chandelier-lit dining rooms. They come from busy and bustling streets.
“Street food is the most democratic cuisine,” viral content creator Bradleytries shared. And he’s right, because it’s accessible, alive, rooted in community, and above all, a representation of what people actually want to eat. In a way, it serves as a medium for telling stories about communities, traditions and the people who make and eat it.
When you combine that cultural relevancy with a strong sense of personality and place, you get the recipe for virality. But it isn’t just about replicating what people are lining up for in their local neighborhoods, it’s about understanding what gives street food its enduring pull.
4. Good Food Doesn’t Need a Passport
Cuisine has always been shaped by the movement of people, ingredients and ideas across borders, so culinary traditions aren’t meant to be static.
As Nico and Ally Gonzales, the couple behind Noodle Lab, Delina, and Itamessy, put it, “What we call traditional food today is simply the borderless cuisine of yesterday that survived long enough to become heritage.”
For them, the goal isn’t to blur culinary identities, but to understand where they come from well enough to let them evolve, making it clear that borderless doesn’t mean mindlessly mashing different cuisines together.
5. The Future Is About More Than Trends
Ultimately, Future Menus isn’t asking chefs to chase whatever’s viral on social media. Its purpose is to identify what consumers actually like and to translate these into tangible opportunities for foodservice operators.
The four pillars might point in different directions, but they all converge on a single idea: diners want food that feels meaningful—connected to culture, rooted in community, designed around their preferences, and open to new influences.
If anything, Future Menus shows us that Filipino food doesn’t need to choose between tradition and innovation. There’s plenty of room for both on the same plate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Future Menus is Unilever Food Solutions’ annual initiative that brings together insights from its global network of chefs and foodservice operators to identify trends that can inspire menus, innovation, and growth.
The four trends are Culinary Roots, Diner Designed, Street Food Couture, and Borderless Cuisine.
Future Menus 2026 was held at Foro de Intramuros in Manila on August 8, 2026.
Street food is accessible, community-driven, culturally relevant, and reflective of what people actually want to eat, making it an important source of inspiration for foodservice.
Borderless Cuisine recognizes that culinary traditions have always evolved through the movement of people, ingredients, and ideas across borders.
