'Swicy': A Flavor Trend Reborn

I had the pleasure of sharing trend insights with journalist Amelia Lucas at CNBC this month, talking about the uptick in ‘swicy’ foods. Swicy, or sweet and spicy, was the flavor of the summer, it seems, appearing in Starbucks Lemonade Refreshers and Korean-flavored snacks. You can read more about it in Amelia’s article here.

My contribution was to note that this alluring and craveable flavor combo used to be called ‘sweet-heat’ back in the 1990s and early 200s when fusing cuisines had an earlier heyday. In fact. I keenly remember Sweet Heat, a San Francisco restaurant serving fast-causal Mexican long before Chipotles were all over. Launched by celebrity chef and Food Network contestant Jeff Saad in 1993, Sweet Heat set the stage for creative and fun flavor and food pairings but also reinforced the power of two basic tastes paired together into an potent whole. Mike’s Hot Honey is a descendant of this trend.

What’s new about ‘swicy’ is the level of heat and the global cuisines offering it. Chile heat continues to rise in fast food, salty snacks and novelty products, testing palates but also increasing consumer understanding and appreciation for the wide world of chile peppers, each with its own Scoville heat rating. Instead of Mexican cuisine being a primary source of chile-enhanced fare, Korean, Thai and regional Chinese cuisines offer new avenues for flavor adventure. Over the last decades, we have also seen new generations of eaters embrace more varied tastes and flavors, including sour and bitter. Plus, we understand umami now; it’s often a taste component in fermented chile condiments that also have a sweet touch.

I celebrate the broadening of culinary sources in our annual ‘hot’ flavor trends and the expanding and sophisticated palates craving these flavors. It’s nice to be able to trace how far we have come as American eaters on the road from sweet-heat to swicy and to imagine what the next iteration will be, five or ten years down the line. Swe-at?