As the year comes to a close, here’s a look at the way we ate in 2014:

We ate breakfast

Mornings are the new frontier. Chalk it up to market saturation. If everyone is already doing dinner, does it make sense to open yet another nighttime option?

This year restaurateurs finally took notice of this golden opportunity, and suddenly breakfast and all-day brunch reigned supreme.

Over at Koko Head Cafe, celebrity chef Lee Anne Wong made cornflake French toast and Ohayou Eggs a morning staple for those in Kaimuki. Tucker & Bevvy and Bills brought a taste of Aussie breakfast to Kapahulu Avenue and Waikiki, respectively. Moiliili was well served by The Nook in Puck’s Alley, and downtown, diners at Scratch Kitchen & Bake Shop embraced global comfort food such as Creole shrimp and grits. Over at the Hawai’i State Art Museum, Grand Cafe made local comfort food its early-morning cause.

We sat down for tea

Move over, coffee, the tea industry is on the rise. Having grown from a $2 billion to a $10 billion industry in 20 years, it’s still expected to double in a couple of years.

No doubt this is because new studies continue to highlight tea’s health benefits, from reducing risk of everything from cancer to kidney stones, to assisting in weight management and blood-sugar control.

But, really, how many people make dietary choices for health reasons alone?

We drink tea because it’s a pleasure. And the tearoom, once the province of luxury hotels, is popping up in unexpected places, like the back of Na Mea Hawai’i/Native Books in Ward Warehouse. There, London imports Shakkel and Liza Yunis opened the Monarch Tea Room, honoring Hawaii’s royals, who were fans of continental style.

Tea at 1024 owner Michele Henry branched out to introduce low tea Wednesdays at the Honolulu Design Center. This reflects the English tradition, where the ritual originated with tea at about 4 p.m. to tide people over until supper was served at about 8 p.m. The "low" in low tea referred to parlor tables where the casual teas took place. This is in contrast to high teas, held at dinner tables with heavier fare and served at about 6 p.m. in place of dinner.

MW Restaurant stands to change the way we enjoy tea, swapping the typical finger sandwiches for amazing monthly feasts of savory bites and desserts by husband-and-wife owners Wade Ueoka and Michelle Karr-Ueoka.

The world became gluten-intolerant

Acknowledging that so many people are gluten-intolerant, or believe they are, more than a few restaurants added gluten-free options this year. Many simply tout rice dishes in place of wheat flour-based dishes.

But even the ubiquitous waffle has been transformed, now made with mochi rice flour. Over at The Nook you can greet the day with a mochi waffle, and Rock Island Cafe in King’s Alley serves a dessert of ice cream-topped mochi waffle.

At Blue Tree Cafe you can pick up a gluten-free scone to go with your kombucha or detox smoothie, and addressing the exodus from pasta, Buca di Beppo now has a full-page gluten-free menu highlighting dishes such as chicken and veal saltimbocca, chicken and veal marsala, salmon Sorrento and a variety of salads.

Dessert evolution

At progressive restaurants the day of basic apple pie and chocolate cake is over. Dessert is now a pastiche of savory, sweet, sour and bitter flavors in the form of arranged pearls, ices, cake cubes and compressed fruit, to be found at restaurants such as Vintage Cave, Chef Mavro, The Pig & the Lady and MW restaurant.

Leading the charge in dessert evolution is MW’s Karr-Ueoka, who beat all the boys (including hubby Wade) for top honors in the StarChefs.com Hawaii Rising Stars competition two years ago. She’s also the first pastry chef to do so.

Karr-Ueoka also launched Baker Faire, a glorified bake sale of goods by professional pastry chefs.

Ensuring that this is no anomaly, at Kapiolani Community College’s Culinary Institute of the Pacific, enrollment is up in pastry classes.

We embraced comfort

With all the news of global terror and cyberattacks, we seek comfort wherever we can find it, and in terms of food, that means familiarity. It’s one reason people gravitated to breakfast, and to the comfort cuisine at Scratch Kitchen as well as its downtown neighbor Livestock Tavern, which specializes in retro Americana fare. Recently it introduced a winter menu featuring the likes of bay scallops and bone marrow served over truffle and Parmesan grits.

King of comfort is AGU — A Ramen Bistro’s Hisashi Uehara, whose Innovative Hot Mess ramen is decadently divine. At the other end of the spectrum is his Jidori yuzu ramen, all lightness and joy.

Then there were the people willing to stand in line for three hours for Keizo Shimamoto’s ramen burger, which pairs two of our favorite comfort foods.

The Chinese are coming?

We saw in the past that Japanese travel brought Japanese-based industry to serve those who may have felt uncomfortable adjusting to Hawaii style.

That movement is unabated as it seems every other new restaurant is Japanese-owned. The Aloha Table Group has been on a roll with the openings of Goofy Cafe and Heavenly in Waikiki; the area also saw the openings of imports Blue Marlin and Buho Cocina y Cantina.

Most welcome was the upscale Sushi Ginza Onodera, which opened on Kapahulu Avenue with $150, $200 and $250 omakase. If there was ever a question whether people could afford such meals, the fact that they now offer just the $200 and $250 options is answer enough. A second restaurant from the group is in the works; this one will focus on teppanyaki.

Chinese travel is in its infancy, but this year we saw the opening of Chinese chain import Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot. Service was shaky at first, but they’ve since found their groove and brought back to life a corner of Ward Centre that had been underutilized for years.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.