Smash Burgers, Birria Tacos, Dirty Sodas: Inside the Anatomy of a Food Trend

What Makes a Food Trend Actually Trend?

Not every delicious dish becomes a cultural moment. Plenty of extraordinary foods stay regional, seasonal, or quietly beloved without ever blowing up. So what separates a passing plate from a full-blown trend? According to food researchers and culinary anthropologists, a few specific conditions need to align: the food has to be visually distinctive, emotionally resonant, and easy to talk about in a single sentence.

Accessibility matters too. The most explosive US food trends tend to land in a price range and format that feels attainable — something you can order at a food truck, a fast-casual counter, or recreate at home with minimal fuss. The moment a dish crosses into "I could actually try that this weekend" territory, it has real momentum.

Cultural timing plays a quiet but powerful role. Trends rarely emerge in a vacuum — they tend to surface when the broader food conversation is ready for them. The sustained American appetite for savory complexity created a receptive audience for bold, layered dishes that might have felt niche a decade earlier.

The Visual Test: If It Doesn't Film Well, It Won't Travel Far

In the current food landscape, virality is almost inseparable from aesthetics. Short-form video platforms have fundamentally changed which foods get amplified and which stay invisible. A cheese pull, a sizzling griddle smash, a cup overflowing with flavored syrups — these aren't accidents. They're the visual hooks that make someone stop scrolling.

Food stylists and restaurant consultants have noted that menu development increasingly considers "the video moment" — a single, undeniable visual beat that makes the dish shareable before it's even tasted. This doesn't mean substance is irrelevant; in fact, dishes that look great but taste forgettable tend to generate one wave of posts and then disappear. The ones with staying power deliver on the visual promise.

It's worth noting that the platform driving a trend shapes who discovers it and how fast. A dish that takes off on TikTok reaches a younger, more geographically diverse audience than one that finds its footing on Instagram or through food media coverage. Platform matters as much as the food itself.

Case Studies: Smash Burgers, Birria Tacos, Dirty Sodas

These three foods didn't trend by accident — each one hit the key pressure points in its own way.

Smash Burgers

The smash burger's genius is theatrical simplicity. A ball of ground beef pressed hard against a screaming-hot griddle creates lacy, caramelized edges through the Maillard reaction — a real, chemistry-backed flavor upgrade, not just a gimmick. The sizzle is audible on video. The crust is unmistakable in a photo. And the technique is replicable at home with a cast-iron pan, which fueled a massive wave of amateur cooks posting their own results.

Birria Tacos

Birria — a slow-braised meat stew originating from the Mexican state of Jalisco — had been a staple in Mexican-American communities for generations before it went mainstream. The trend accelerated when the consommé-dipping format became a social media sensation: a taco dunked in rich, crimson broth is one of the most visually compelling food moments of the last several years. Importantly, its popularity has introduced many Americans to a genuinely deep culinary tradition, sparking wider curiosity about regional Mexican cuisine.

Dirty Sodas

A dirty soda — typically a soft drink doctored with cream, flavored syrups, and mix-ins — emerged from Utah's soda shop culture and found a national audience almost entirely through social video. Its appeal is customization: the combinations are near-infinite, the colors are vivid, and every cup looks like a different creation. It also offered a non-alcoholic "treat" that resonated with a growing segment of Americans moderating their drinking habits.

“The foods that endure a trend cycle are almost always the ones that were genuinely good before anyone was watching. Virality can introduce a dish to millions, but flavor and tradition are what keep people coming back.”

— Khushbu Shah, Food journalist and author of 'Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora'

The Role of Restaurants, Ghost Kitchens, and Street Culture

Brick-and-mortar restaurants are no longer the sole incubators of food trends. Street food, pop-ups, food trucks, and — increasingly — ghost kitchens have become faster and more flexible laboratories for new ideas. Because ghost kitchens operate without a physical dining room, they can test a trend-driven menu concept with far lower overhead, then scale or pivot within weeks based on delivery data.

This has meaningfully compressed the timeline from "emerging" to "everywhere." Ghost kitchens and the delivery-only restaurant economy have made it possible for a trend to reach suburban neighborhoods without a single storefront opening there. A customer in a mid-sized city can order birria tacos from a ghost kitchen operating out of a shared commissary, experiencing a trend that might otherwise have taken years to arrive.

The result is a more democratized — but also more crowded — trend environment. Diners in the broader American dining culture now encounter trend foods faster than ever, but so does every operator looking to capitalize on the moment.

How Trends Die (And What Survives)

Oversaturation is the most common killer. When every fast-food chain, grocery store, and meal-kit service releases a version of the same dish within the same quarter, the sense of discovery evaporates — and with it, much of the emotional appeal. The food doesn't get worse; the cultural excitement just drains away.

What survives peak hype tends to have one of two things going for it: genuine flavor depth, or ritual. Fermented foods are a good example — while certain formats have trended loudly, the category as a whole has maintained momentum because the genuine health and flavor interest in fermentation runs deeper than any single product cycle.

Birria is likely to follow a similar path — transitioning from trend to staple in cities with strong Mexican-American food cultures, while fading from trend-chasing menus that treated it as a novelty. Smash burgers have arguably already made that transition, becoming a legitimate menu standard rather than a moment.

What's Likely Next on the Trend Cycle

Predicting the next breakout food is genuinely difficult — trends resist easy forecasting, and the ones that feel certain often stall while surprises emerge from unexpected corners. That said, a few patterns offer clues about where momentum is building.

Regional American cuisines that haven't yet had their mainstream moment — Appalachian, Gullah Geechee, Indigenous — are generating serious interest in food media and chef conversations. Dishes with a clear origin story and cultural depth tend to have more staying power than pure novelty items. Meanwhile, the American appetite for customizable, non-alcoholic beverage experiences (of which dirty sodas are one expression) shows no signs of slowing.

The mechanics of trend formation are also shifting. As platforms evolve and algorithm behavior changes, the next food moment might arrive through a channel that doesn't exist yet in its current form. What stays constant is the underlying human pull: we want food that surprises us, connects us to something real, and gives us something worth sharing.