The end of the year brings out the worst in food writing. Writers patch together their predictions for the coming season in a hasty attempt to fill column inches and bytes of data with their half-formed thoughts. The worst portmanteau in the English language, listicle, is bandied around with little regard for the consequences.

Prepare yourself for the annual onslaught of top ten food lists that predict that a is the new b. As much as idle speculation is as diverting as talking about food, the speculation has little predictive power. Last year Epicurious predicted that Cambodian is the new Thai, this year they predict that Peruvian is the new Thai.

There is more to come, not to mention entire editions of food magazines that rehash the prior decade of turkey recipes. (As an aside: for most people, the only practical way to cook a turkey and then present it whole is to bake it; the best way to keep it moist is add pan juices to it after it is cooked and sliced. The last thirty years of hype surrounding how to cook turkey hasn't managed to change how people do it in practice. It's not going to happen this year, if ever).

The more sober food writers use the end of the year to round up the longer term issues that have already happened. With the spreading economic downturn and the decline in eating out at a corporation's expense, it is a grim time to be opening a restaurant or any other business that relies on discretionary income to survive. Even the way that restaurateurs refer to their trade is changing. Nicholas Lander in the Financial Times observes :

"Over the past few weeks, as I have watched the most recent openings, read the latest press releases and talked to restaurateurs, I have been increasingly aware that 2008 may see the end of nothing other than the restaurant. By this, I hasten to add, I mean not the restaurant as an institution, but the name. Restaurateurs appear to be doing everything to avoid calling their new openings restaurants. Café, bar, bar and kitchen, bistro, bistrot de luxe, canteen, trattoria, osteria and lounge are now far more common names than "restaurant", either alone or in some kind of combination associated with a place name or that of a well-known individual. Nobody today, it seems, wants to proclaim that they are opening a restaurant."

Lander goes on to explain that this end to the use of the term restaurant is a result of the perception of expense and the move away from eating more formal meals. In cash-strapped times and with the need to appear frugal, the breakfast meeting supplants the three-martini lunch. Will 2009 hold the end of the restaurant?