Unilever's Future Menus 2025 Hits Egypt With New Take on Global Dining

CairoScene

9 hours ago

Unilever's Future Menus 2025 Hits Egypt With New Take on Global Dining
When chefs gather under the shadow of the pyramids, it's not usually to talk about tacos. But this month, at Khufu's restaurant—yes, that Khufu's, with the limestone backdrop and panoramic views of the world's last remaining ancient world wonder—Unilever Food Solutions did just that. The team in Egypt localised the global Future Menus 2025 campaign with a plate-spinning mix of trend forecasting, street food makeovers, and cultural deep dives. There were bao buns. There were Filipino sauces. There were updated takes on your teta's stews.
The premise of Future Menus is simple: identify the shifts happening across global kitchens and translate them into useful frameworks for chefs. The 2025 edition distills those shifts into four major menu trends: Street Food Couture, Borderless Cuisine, Culinary Roots, and Diner Designed. If the names sound like they came out of a food-meets-fashion brainstorming session, that's because dining today is as much about vibe as it is about flavour—and Unilever Food Solutions knows it.
Take Street Food Couture, for instance. Executive Chef Perihan Saleh of Gracias has been watching this trend marinate for years. 'Since corona,' she said, 'people have been craving the food of the streets—but with an uplifted touch.' That 'touch' translates to cleaner techniques, tighter plating, and flavours that hold their ground without drowning in nostalgia. Think Korean corn dogs with architectural integrity. Or tacos engineered for crunch at first bite.
Then there's Borderless Cuisine, which captures the real-time remix happening in kitchens from Seoul to Sohag. With migration, travel, and algorithmically-curated food content all blending into one big sensory feed, diners are hungrier than ever for flavour collisions. At the event, Chef Shehab Mostafa of Khufu's brought this trend to life with dishes that reimagine Egyptian classics through global ingredients and technique.
But while global fusions got plenty of heat, Culinary Roots was the course that hit closest to home. This trend was led by Chef Sherif Afifi, Executive Chef at Unilever Food Solutions, in collaboration with Chef Mostafa Seif. Together, they created a 'four hands' dish—a single concept shaped by two culinary minds, rooted in heritage but elevated with technique. Chef Sherif has been leading the Future Menus programme in Egypt for the past three years and has travelled to the Netherlands annually to collaborate with Unilever Food Solutions' global chef team.
Meanwhile, the final trend, Diner Designed, taps into the slightly chaotic, entirely social-media-driven ways people eat now. It's not about prix fixe and more about pick-your-own-adventure menus. According to Unilever Food Solutions, 47% of diners would rather spend money on experiences than things—and yes, that stat was probably pulled from your FYP. Culinary Director Yomna Khedr, who runs the show at Lokali, summed it up neatly: 'Just eating isn't enough. It's fun to play with your food—and experience it.'
The Future Menus launch event wasn't your typical hospitality summit. It didn't rely on buzzwords like 'elevated,' 'artisanal,' or 'game-changing.' Instead, it leaned into real kitchens, real chefs, and real challenges. What happens when your diner wants Korean heat, Egyptian comfort, and three types of texture in a single dish? How do you train your team to build a menu that makes sense to a Gen Z diner who grew up on mukbangs and Michelin?
That's where Unilever Food Solutions is hoping to make a mark. With a portfolio that includes Knorr Professional and Hellmann's, plus a global team of over 250 chefs, their goal isn't to dictate taste but rather help chefs translate it. Their platform offers recipes, ingredient support, and training that allows kitchens to riff without losing footing.
Still, launching this in Egypt, at a restaurant with a direct sightline to the last standing ancient wonder of the world, added some metaphorical weight. Because if there's one thing that food, like history, doesn't do, is stay still. Tastes shift. Techniques evolve. Menus need to move.
What Future Menus 2025 makes clear is that movement isn't just coming from the usual centres of culinary gravity. It's just as likely to start with a street cart in Manila, a grandmother in Fayoum, or a burger joint in Guadalajara. And when it lands, it's chefs—not algorithms—who have to make it work on a plate.