The many meals I eat to compile guides to the city’s 50 best restaurants, best new restaurants, and top tasting menus for $100 or less give me a lot of time to notice the tiny details that can set a restaurant apart and the little patterns that emerge at any given moment. Some of these trends deserve to be served up to customers on a silver platter; others leave a bad taste in my mouth. Take a nibble of this season’s trends, listed from sweet to sour.

Tiny ’Tinis

The name’s Bond. Lightweight Bond. Shaken or stirred, just make it half the size, so I can drive—or have a second. Try Half Shell’s happy hour mini-tini, Atoma’s Le Tigre, and Lonely Siren’s mini-freezertini.

Pow Pão (de Queijo)

These little tapioca cheese breads made it out of Brazilian restaurants and onto menus at the Dandy of King Street Crossing, at Lark, and as a breakfast sandwich bun at Robin’s Restaurant & Market.

Window of Opportunity

Quick and cute, walk-up windows thankfully continue to open all the time. Most recently: Harry’s Fine Foods’ Smash Burger Window, Pizza Ritual’s Delridge digs, and Pike Street Hospitality Group’s Double O’ Burgers.

Ta-ta, Tasting Menus

Off Alley and Tomo are both nixing the tasting menu options and leaning into à la carte. Tomo found the format too restrictive, Off Alley said it wasn’t fun for them. Diners, the choice is yours, like it or not.

Don’t Waffle on Buns

Waffles are wonderful. So are sandwiches. Waffle sandwiches? Terrible. Here, I need the choice, and I choose bread. Or pão de queijo.