India, Dec. 20 -- Which came first: The chicken or the egg? More importantly, where did you see a trending food first: Online or on a menu? All this year, our feeds have overflowed with cloud bread, Dubai chocolate and matcha this, matcha that. We thought the Great Dalgona Challenge of 2020 was a one-time viral obsession. It was only the starting point. Now, we're seeing accordion potatoes, kunafa cheesecake, jiggly pancakes, flying noodles, freakshakes, wobbly capybara pana cottas, cube croissants and heaven knows what else on our feed. They've popped up on Indian menus too, right at the height of their internet fame. It means that in the kitchens, great minds are tracking every trend and turning it into a #YouHaveToTryThis moment. It doesn't always work. But when it does: Ka-ching! Earlier this year, as jiggly milk puddings and pana cotta in animal shapes gave everyone cute aggression, confectioners were watching closely. Kolkata restaurant Boulevard added wobbly capybaras and cat puddings to their menu. Then, when cloud coffee - a coconut-water espresso with frothy foam - went viral, nearly every trendy cafe put it on the menu. This isn't as easy as see-and-do. Viral videos typically show the final product, or an elegant (but unhelpful) montage of how it was prepared. So, a chef who wants to add the item to the menu must attempt some careful reverse engineering. Tarak Bhattacharya's consumer insights team at Mad Over Donuts knew, back in January, that the hype around Dubai chocolate was worth cashing in on. They worked quickly, testing their own version, and within 40 days, they'd rolled out a Dubai Chocolate donut across their 140 stores. "We observed a clear 'come specifically for the trend' behaviour," he says. "Guests added it first when they ordered it on the app, and asked for it at the counter." At the Mexican restaurant Miss Margarita in Delhi, chef Noah Barnes has instructed his team to look out for what's blowing up online. "Because I'm stuck in the kitchen most of the time, where there's no network!" It's how they hit upon the idea for their pistachio kunafa tres leches; after pistachios and kunafa were both trending. Barnes's team developed a version that fit right into the Mexican theme, but also was an Instagrammable dish. They added pistachio frosting instead of whipped cream, and topped it with crumbled kunafa. The gamble worked. "Customers began ordering it twice as much as the regular tres leches." Trends don't always come from Insta. Mumbai restaurant Sthamba Global Brewery has butterbeer on the menu. There's no such thing - it's from the Harry Potter books. No recipe exists, so they invented one, a caramelly drink, served with a dollop of cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce. Within weeks, they had influencers swarming down the place, and their Reel got over 7 million views. "Most days, there's a butterbeer ordered on every table," says founder Bhavishya Pratap. The pipeline from viral dish to menu special isn't always straightforward. Most dishes that blow up are twists on Asian or American food, and must be adapted to Indian tastes. In Delhi, Harajuku Tokyo Cafe had jiggly pancakes on their menu when they launched in 2021. Founder Gaurav Kanwar had been to Japan and had seen the excitement over chonky pancake-wobble videos. "It took 2,500 pancakes and nearly a year before we could get the temperature of the batter right, to prevent the pancakes from going flat," he recalls. When they finally launched, customers queued up. The pancake remains one of their most-ordered items. In Mumbai, BANG BANG! Noodle put flying noodles - noodles stiffly suspended mid-air above the bowl - on their menu when they launched in July. "A few months before we were set to launch, I saw a video of a street-food vendor from Bangkok or Malaysia deep-frying the noodles and making them stand upright, defying gravity," says chef and founder Rahul Punjabi. "We love doing food in a fun and non-serious way, so this played right into our style." It took them 15 tries to find a way to hold the noodles up. He won't reveal his secret. Serving viral trends is easier for smaller, standalone restaurants. At larger chains, it takes time for decisions to be signed off at the executive level, and for a new product to appeal to customers across more than five outlets in different cities. But everyone's hurrying up. "The turnaround time to introduce a new flavour or dish in 2021-22 used to be a year," says Shreh Madan, co-founder of pan-India chain Burgrill. "Now, even McDonald's and Burger King have quickly put out a Korean range of burgers within six months, so as to not miss out." Viral foods come with their own set of buzzy descriptors. Pancakes are jiggly; jellies are wobbly; Japanese cheesecake is cloud-like. Customers come to restaurants "for the trending keywords", says Madan. When Burgrill introduced Korean fries and a honey gochujang dip recently, their Zomato and Swiggy data showed that just adding "Korean" to their menu had more people landing on their restaurant page. "Right now, marketing is not about simply presenting your menu. It is about acknowledging the hype." Food trends have become a good way for restaurants to introduce customers to dishes they'd normally never try, says Tarannum Sehgal, founder-chef of Delhi restaurant Espressos AnyDay. Customers want the thick Japanese sandos they saw online. They want to take selfies with their matcha latte. They want to pull apart a cheesy Korean bun themselves. "That flash-in-the-pan hype generates demand for the other parts of the menu too," says Sehgal. And ultimately, following a trend can give a kitchen enough confidence to attempt their own trend too. Mumbai's Blondie came up with a masala avocado benne dosa when they launched in April. The idea was to build on the already popular benne dosa. It did blow up online, but in the wrong way. "When we launched, the internet was divided; it quickly became the subject of memes," says co-founder Natasha Hemani. Comedian Tanmay Bhat made a meme about it, but then ended up trying it and loving it. "The goal is to balance familiarity with surprise, using ingredients or pairings that are unconventional, yet make perfect sense once you taste them." Madan believes that in the food business, particularly if it's aimed at young spenders, paying attention and acting swiftly is essential. "Viral foods have reaction-value. You need to capitalise them as soon as you can," he says. "Restaurants now put out new offerings in three months, but we'll have to be a lot faster if we want to tap online trends." Chefs are already thinking about Mexican cuisine, gourmet South Indian food, and nostalgic foods from the early years of the century. Are they even on your feed yet?...