Pumpkin Pumpkin
Dallas restaurants love pumpkin and there are good reasons why
From pancakes to ravioli to cocktails, pumpkin right now is easy to find on Dallas restaurant menus. Taverna, the Italian concept from the Lombardi family, has pumpkin cappellacci, filled with pumpkin, ricotta cheese, and spices. IdleRye in Deep Ellum has pumpkin ravioli sprinkled with pine nuts.
Bisous Bisous Patisserie has it covered with pumpkin muffins, macarons, and cheesecake. Empire Baking Co. has pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. The Woolworth in downtown Dallas is doing a crowd-pleasing pumpkin spice martini.
Houlihan's is doing pumpkin spice crème brulee and a pumpkin spice martini. And restaurants like Maple Leaf Diner, Original Pancake House, and Buzzbrews Kitchen are just three of the many-more restaurants serving pumpkin pancakes. Pumpkin pumpkin everywhere.
Starbucks has a lot to do with it. Since the coffee company introduced its Pumpkin Spice Latte in 2003, it has transformed what used to be a pie served at Thanksgiving dinner into a flavor for everything from drinks to candles, spawning an entire pumpkin-centric industry. The company always sees a spike in sales after PSL becomes available; demand is at an all-time peak.
In search of numbers to track the inexorable climb of pumpkin, Upserve, a restaurant management platform, looked at data from bar and restaurant customers around the country related to pumpkin sales.
Demand for pumpkin-themed food and drinks in 2017 is outpacing 2016 and 2015, which themselves were yuge pumpkin years. Compared to the same week last year, the total number of pumpkin items in 2017 went up by 15.3 percent.
The demand for pumpkin-related food and drinks keeps on growing.
Upserve also found that the most popular day for consuming pumpkin is Saturdays: 50 percent more pumpkin items sell on Saturday than any week day. That's followed by Sundays and Fridays. We reserve our pumpkining for the weekends.
NBC News says that we're not just into the taste, but with how pumpkin makes us feel. It's an emotional thing. Cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg are holiday flavors, associated with Thanksgiving and the harvest, which used to be the most prosperous time of year.
Pumpkin is also more appealing because of its seasonal, temporal nature; the illusion of its limited availability makes you want it more.
This story uses the word "pumpkin" 29 times.
