As menu offerings, dips provide an easy, adaptable way to bolster a restaurant’s selection of shareables and to showcase a wide variety of flavors. Modernizing top-performing dips offers operators a means to introduce contemporary ingredients and riffs that have ongoing mass customer appeal. Here, we explore new takes on a pair of favorite dips: one served hot and hailing from Mexico, the other cool and refreshing with origins in the Mediterranean. Both share a craveable, creamy base and seemingly endless flavor variations.

Queso: Hot With Potential

Queso and other hot cheese dips offer menu developers a breadth of culinary creativity for adding instant indulgence to any format they grace. To cement queso’s continued popularity, try experimenting with different cheese blends, blending in unexpected ingredients, adding hearty toppers and tapping visible seasonings, whether spices, herbs, nuts or seeds.

Center Around a Theme

• Add a variety of spicy ingredients as queso toppers, such as fresh, pickled or fried chiles; purée, sauce or salsa; and meat.
• Feature a medley of cheeses by using cheese blends in the queso and finishing with complementary shaved, crumbled or grated cheeses.
• Blend creamy, roasted vegetable purées into queso for a complex, sweet-spicy-savory amalgamation, such as roasted butternut squash-chipotle cheddar queso.

Tap Into Consumer Favorites

• Steal a page from the success of spinach-artichoke dips, and spike pepper-Jack cream cheese queso with steamed spinach, chopped roasted mushrooms and charred poblanos.
• Introduce charred flavors by topping smoked cheddar queso with chopped barbecue burnt ends and a side of fried pickles for dipping.
• Embrace seasonal, pub-style comfort with Oktoberfest beer-cheese queso topped with smoked bacon jam, a dollop of grain mustard and a side of soft pretzel knots.

Transform Cheesy Offerings Into New Queso Flavors

• Showcase regional flavor with a Philly Cheese Queso, featuring melted provolone, sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions, onion powder and a beef crumble topping.
• Transform lasagna into a queso by ditching the noodles but keeping the creamy ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan and marinara sauce.
• Capitalize on Americans’ love of pizza with a piping-hot Meat Lovers Queso, filled with mozzarella, spicy pepperoni, sausage crumbles and sliced ham.

Double Down on Mexican Cuisine

• Add refried lentils and top with cilantro-lime queso and salsa macha.
• Crown queso with a trifecta of salsa verde, fresh pico de gallo and guacamole.
• Sub Oaxaca cheese in place of queso fresco and finish with house-braised birria and pickled onion slivers.
• Top traditional queso with a meat (or all veggie) picadillo and toasted pepitas.

Introduce Global Flavors

• Serve melty provoleta in a cast-iron skillet with skirt steak, a dollop of chimichurri, queso fresco crumbles and red pepper flakes.
• Embrace Korean flavors with a kimchi-white miso queso sprinkled with gochujang-spiked pork cracklins and paired with crostini.
• Lean into Indian cuisine with paneer queso topped with a dollop of mango-papaya chutney and garam masala-spiked chickpea crunch and paired with warm naan.

Menu Sightings

Qdoba’s Queso Apocalypto begins with the brand’s standard queso and then kicks up the heat with salsa roja, habanero salsa, pickled jalapeños and fiery hot crunchies.

Yellow Ranger in Austin, Texas, moves queso into modern realms with its “Eventually Famous” Black Garlic Queso, which is dressed in housemade chile crisp and scallions and served with wonton chips and chilled wok-charred broccoli.

Also in Austin, Better Half brings intriguing decadence to its Carnitas Loaded Queso, featuring pork carnitas, smashed avocado, crema, asadero crumbles, pickled onion and beet powder.

Tzatziki: Cool and Craveable

Creamy and refreshingly vibrant, tzatziki is primed for signature culinary riffs. Playing up complementary flavor pairings (sweet and savory, tangy and nutty) adds nuance while global fusions illustrate its far-reaching versatility and prove the dip isn’t restricted to Mediterranean cuisines.

Photo Credit: Twisted Gyros

Twisted Gyros fluffs up the tzatziki formula by incorporating whipped feta. Toasted pistachios, housemade za’atar and chives orbit a pool of wildflower honey.

Embrace a Sense of Place

• Go extra Mediterranean by adding sun-dried tomatoes for a little sweetness or olive tapenade and capers for briny flavor.
• Adjust tzatziki’s intensity with a combination of raw and roasted garlic, bringing the best of both flavorings together.
• Incorporate Greek yogurt crema, cucumber, minced jicama, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, avocado oil and chile-lime powder for a Mexican-inspired version.
• Combine Greek yogurt, cucumber, garlic, shiso, mint, yuzu-lemon juice blend, olive oil and pickled ginger for a Japanese-inspired version.

Introduce a Cucumber Companion

• Add roasted golden beets for subtle earthiness, grated red radish for a peppery bite, chopped kimchi (or fermented sea kelp) for umami, raw, grated rainbow carrots for colorful crunch or chopped pickled vegetables for extra zing.
• Along with grated cucumber, add beet or carrot powder for complexity and unexpected visual contrast.

Bring the Heat

• Counter tzatziki’s coolness with harissa for fiery heat, Calabrian chile flakes for subtle warmth or smoked hot paprika for spicy intrigue.
• Add heat—or sweet heat—stylings via Indian or Thai curries, or even a hint of chamoy.
• Experiment with new chile variations of htipiti, a traditional dip featuring spicy peppers and whipped feta.

Pack in Herbaceous, Floral or Fruity Notes

• Replace dill entirely or use a combination of half fresh dill and half fresh mint, oregano, cilantro or chives.
• Add chopped watercress, matcha, edible flowers, minced honeydew or peaches for spring-like freshness and pops of color.

Enhance That Tzatziki Tang

• Blend sour cream or ranch into Greek yogurt for deepened tanginess.
• Use avocado for additional richness or swirl in an extra virgin olive oil-avocado oil blend to enhance creaminess.
• Along with fresh lemon juice, add grated lemon zest or ground sumac to amplify the Greek yogurt. Lime, orange or grapefruit juice or zest could also be used in place of lemon juice.

Whip It—Or Skip It

• Blend in a whipped cheese, such as feta, ricotta or goat cheese, to fluff up the dense Greek yogurt base.
• Feature a whipped Parmesan-burrata with roasted cherry tomatoes and an Italian basil oil drizzle.
• Swap out yogurt in favor of quark cheese, a slightly tart German-Baltic cheese that falls in between Greek yogurt and cottage cheese in texture.

Menu Sightings

Bavel in Los Angeles showcases a touch of modernity within two tzatziki-flavored appetizers: Grilled Prawns, with harissa marinade, cured zucchini and cucumber tzatziki, fresh herbs and lime; and Grilled Celery Root, with honey mushroom tzatziki, brown butter, burnt harissa and herbs.

Laya, also in Los Angeles, tastefully elevates tzatziki with a simple application: Octopus Skewers with lemon, dill and charred cucumber tzatziki.

On the rooftop of the Santa Monica Proper Hotel in California, Calabra delivers the unexpected in its Salmon Tartare, with tzatziki broth, preserved lemon, crispy lavash, orange and avocado.

In Hillsboro, Ore., Twisted Gyros brings layered flavor and texture to its Whipped Feta, with wildflower honey, toasted pistachios, chives, house-made za’atar and olive oil.