Every few months, the culinary world seems to collectively agree on a new obsession, as if word spread overnight and each kitchen decided to try it at once. A cake gets rolled in sprinkles. A croissant gets filled with something entirely new. A rice cake learns to caramelise. And just like that, an entire menu category is reborn, one viral bite at a time. Masala’s rounded-up some of the hottest food trends everyone's been talking about this season, where each one actually started, and where to try it for yourself.
Picture a birthday cake shrunk down to a single cup, dipped headfirst in a crunchy dome of tiny round sprinkles, and eaten with a spoon straight out of the container. The dot cake, named rather literally, for those very dots capping it; stacks of fluffy cake and frosting into individual portions before finishing them off in that signature crackly shell. It's nostalgia dressed up as novelty: the flavour of a childhood party cake, minus the commitment of slicing one, with a crunch-to-fluff contrast that's exactly what makes it work. The whole thing traces back to The Dot Cakes, a mother-daughter bakery out of Roslyn, New York, before detonating across TikTok.
Spotted at Babycakes across locations in Bangkok and Oldschool Brownies exclusively at their Siam Discovery outpost.
Somewhere, a sushi chef looked at an ice pop and had an idea: rice, fish, and vegetables, layered straight into a tube, ready to be pushed up and eaten bite by bite, no cleanup required. The concept was pioneered by Suka Sushi, a tiny, seatless counter in New York's Kips Bay, which built the format around a soy-sauce stick acting as the plunger, explicitly designed for eating on-the-go. It's a clever solution for the usual fuss of eating sushi properly: no chopsticks, no dipping bowl, and no table required. It turns a sit-down dish into something you can eat mid-conversation without missing a beat. Practical, portable, and undeniably Instagrammable.
Spotted at Bangkok’s very own SUSHI POP along Banthat Thong road, and available across branches at Sushi Seki.
The original Choco Gems is real fruit, dipped whole in chocolate, cracked open to reveal what's underneath. The version that actually broke the internet is Choco Gems Pop, credited to The Rolling Pinn, and here's the twist: there's no real fruit involved. It's ice cream moulded to look like whole fruits coated in a crunchy chocolate shell. A ‘popping’ edition goes further, folding a popping-candy crackle right into that same ice cream centre. The Rolling Pinn's own signature lineup keeps growing too: Raspberry almond, Banana peanut butter, and a Dubai gems rendition with fresh strawberry or raspberry and a pistachio-kunafa filling. Whichever version you land on, it's the kind of bite-sized treat that's dangerously easy to keep reaching for.
Spotted across The Rolling Pinn branches, with other confectionery houses following suit such as Ruby Crush at Central Rama 9 and Swensen's, nationwide.
Tteok is best known worldwide in its savoury form: think tteokbokki, the spicy, saucy street food staple. This year, that chewy, bouncy texture went mainstream in a completely different direction: butter tteok, baked until the edges caramelise and turn golden, dusted with sugar, and often served with a fresh milk cream dip on the side. The end result is a delightful combination, crisp outside, soft and pillowy within, that's genuinely addictive. Despite the name, its roots trace back further than Seoul: it's a riff on Shanghai's “huangyou niangao,” a butter rice cake from a shop called Luxihe, which Korean cafés picked up, rebranded, and sent viral.
Spotted at local patisseries such as Butterbear Café, Eric Kayser, YOLK, and BreadTalk, across branches citywide.
Some of the most interesting food trends this year haven't been new inventions so much as old ones wearing borrowed clothes: a familiar Indian flavour smuggled into a format nobody expected it in. Here are two that stood out.
Take the flaky, buttery architecture of a French croissant, then stuff it with a whole syrup-soaked gulab jamun, cardamom sweetness and all, and you have a pastry caught delightfully between two very different childhoods: one built on sugar syrup and rose, the other on butter and pastry dough. The outside stays properly flaky and golden, the way any self-respecting croissant should, while the inside turns soft, moist, and unmistakably gulab jamun. The trend, nicknamed the “cromun”, was born at L'Opéra in Delhi before spreading online. It hasn't reached Bangkok yet, but expect that to change soon.
It looks like tiramisu from across the room, but nothing about the flavour is Italian. The espresso soak is replaced with saffron and cardamom-scented milk. The mascarpone is folded through with rasmalai itself with whole pieces tucked between the layers rather than left as a garnish. The fusion dessert quickly became a favourite on the dessert menu at Pincode, Chef Kunal Kapur's restaurant known for its take on India's regional cuisines. Have a taste for yourself at their outpost along Civil Lines and Select Citywalk in Delhi.