The 2011 Worlds of Flavor® International Conference & Festival — WORLD CASUAL: The Future of American Menus — celebrated the "world casual" culinary traditions of Asia, Latin America, the Mediterranean, and beyond, and focused on the foods and flavors that American chefs and diners are enthusiastically embracing.

A long, slow economic recovery means consumers will seek value for many years to come, even as they venture back to restaurants. At the same time, excitement about top chefs and all things culinary continues its viral spread into mainstream culture. Percolating through all of this is greater concern for our health, for the environment, for the quality of foods we produce, for stronger urban-rural connections, and for the preservation of regional identities.

The 14th Annual Worlds of Flavor Conference explored how these mega-trends are playing out in the evolution of our menus, and in the minds of today's young, talented chefs and tomorrow's foodservice entrepreneurs.

The Culinary Institute of America's annual three-day forum is widely acknowledged as our country's most influential professional forum on world cuisines, food cultures, and flavor trends. Each November, the Worlds of Flavor Conference showcases the gold standards of world cuisines that are reshaping American palates and the U.S. foodservice industry.

We hope that you enjoy the video highlights from the 2011 WORLD CASUAL: The Future of American Menus conference! We look forward to seeing you at our Greystone campus November 1-3, 2012 for Arc of Flavor: Re-imagining Culinary Exchange, from the Mediterranean and Middle East to Asia. Look for more details about Arc of Flavor on this site in early 2012.

"As always, the food extravaganza known as Worlds of Flavor was a first-rate phenom! Food, content and presenters were world class; [Worlds of Flavor] truly is the industry's best conference. Nothing else is even in the same zip code."
-Patricia Dailey, CEO, Dailey Endeavors
(former editor-in-chief, Restaurants & Institutions)