What is ‘fricy’? Matt Preston on the fruity and spicy food trend - Food Files

Mar 09, 2026

Last year, ‘swicy’ (sweet and spicy) dishes helped drive the trend for flavour combos like hot honey. Now, we have a new trend. Say hello to ‘fricy’.

‘Fricy’ is the bold, contrasting combination of fruity and spicy flavours that’s been heralded as one of the big food trends for 2026. At its simplest, this can mean barbecued pineapple dusted with black pepper, chilli sprinkled on fresh mango, or hot fruit pickles and chutneys.

There are many ways to bring this ‘fricy’ trend into your home cooking, whether that’s diving into your old cookbooks to find a retro recipe for chicken and apricot curry, or plundering ideas from countries that already love ‘fricy’ flavours, like Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Caribbean.

Where you’ll see ‘fricy’ in dishes around the world

I immediately think of the mellow heat of a Thai duck and lychee curry, a spicy dressed pomelo salad or the classic green papaya salad dressed with lime juice, crushed dried shrimp and enough chilli to make your lips sing. I’ve also become a huge fan of making a salad with fresh pineapple, cucumber, jalapeno and Vietnamese hot mint.

The Sri Lankan love of ‘fricy’ is best expressed with their classic mango curry known as amba maluwa. In this part of the world, you’ll also find a number of interesting curries made with starfruit as the central ingredient, with the sourness of tamarind or the creaminess of coconut as the foil to all the sweetness and heat. Heat is likely to be somewhat more strident in the ‘fricy’ dishes of the Caribbean, with perhaps with fiery habanero in that mango salsa for jerked meats, or even fish.

The English have also long been a fan of using fruit in savoury ways, but I love adding a little heat to their classic condiments; maybe by adding a dollop of hot English mustard to my apple sauce for roast pork, diced jalapeno stirred through mint jelly for roast lamb, or adding orange juice and finely diced red chilli to redcurrant jelly to make a spicy Cumberland sauce.

‘Fricy’ in cocktails and drinks

This new appreciation of ‘fricy’ also helps to explain the boom in the interest and sales of spicy margaritas. To up the ‘fricy’ content, this could be served in a glass with a Taijin rim – Tajin is that Mexican spice mix of mild chilli, lime and salt that people have been falling in love with recently as a brighter heat alternative to crispy chilli oil. Taijin could also be sprinkled over fresh-cut melon or grilled slabs of watermelon as a refreshing summery snack on a hot day.

Credit: Ben Dearnley

How to cook ‘fricy’ at home

In my own kitchen, I am more like to find the ‘fricy’ flavour combination popping up in a tagine of apricots and chicken (and/or chickpeas) spiced with a healthy whack of harissa spice paste; or in a ‘fricy’ dressing of orange juice, sugar, vinegar, fish sauce, soy sauce, ginger and red pepper flakes for marinating chicken. Grill the chicken, and then the leftover marinade can be boiled down to make a ‘fricy’ dressing, or brushed on the chook as a glaze. As a glaze mix, this works equally well with vegies like roast pumpkin or carrots, as well as prawns.