Since I work in the restaurant industry, every so often someone will ask me what I think the most obnoxious current New York dining trend is. There are so many to choose from: communal tables, restaurants decorated like a Bay Ridge yard sale, "speakeasies," bacon everything, food trucks, unpublished reservations numbers, the list goes on and on. But bar none, my most hated industry trend is the one for serving “shared small plates." I've sworn off restaurants with a small plates menu format. I think you should too, and I'll tell you why.
Once upon at time in New York, when you sat down in a restaurant and looked at the menu, you knew what you were getting yourself into. There were appetizers, entrees, and desserts, and you'd order some combination of those three based on how hungry you were. You knew how much food you'd be getting and what you'd be paying for the meal. It was all so simple, so reasonable.
But if New York liked "simple" and "reasonable," it would be called Boston. Over the past five years, that tried and true format has fallen by the wayside as more and more restaurants traffic exclusively in small plates meant to be shared by the whole table. It’s a formula that seems specially designed to stun, disorient, and anger me for the entire time I’m in a restaurant.
It starts when I’m handed the menu, which is either just one interminable list of dishes or, even worse, dishes divided into multiple categories with names in foreign languages (calientes, crudos, aperitivos, pesces, words that you vaguely remember from high school Spanish class or the Italian guy you dated in college). You're supposed to order a bunch of different dishes and share them, because someone decided that that’s festive.
Well, there's nothing less festive then a group of six people all silently studying their menus, heads cocked and brows furrowed like they’re trying to decipher the Rosetta stone. No one has any idea how many small plates they want or how much they should be paying for them. How big is the zucchini tempura going to be? How many plates should we get as a table, total? Should we order something from each category? Does my friend's anorexic girlfriend count as a whole person or half a person? Should everyone order a couple of things, or should one person order everything? Civilized conversation cannot possibly resume until we have some answers.
Eventually we get past the hurdle of ordering, likely thanks to a server who takes pity on us and suggests a few favorites, and the food begins to arrive – first in a trickle, and then in a flood. I've never been good at sharing anything, least of all my food. "Shared small plates" to me conjures visions of inhaling croquetas, shoving arancini in my cheeks like a gerbil, spearing strips of hanger steak and dragging them onto my plate before the server removes a dish to "clear some room" as the tapas offensive continues. Before I know it, dinner has devolved into a concentrated attempt at hunting, securing, and destroying food.
And that makes me hate myself, because dining should be about slow and deliberate tasting, free of worry that while I'm savoring a bison slider someone else is going to bogart my share of the prosciutto. And it definitely should not be about eating a duck meatball followed by a fish taco followed by a pierogi, which causes such sensory overload (not to mention crippling heartburn) that within 20 minutes of leaving the restaurant, I have no recollection of anything that I ate. I just want to lie down. There's a reason why none of the best meals of your life have ever been in buffet format -- it's like listening to 10 seconds each of The Beatles, Bob Marley, Madonna, U2, and Dean Martin. The whole is waaaaay less than the sum of the parts.
But the worst part of the meal is still yet to come: it's the bill! Ohhhh, the sticker shock. Someone very clever realized that people with a perfectly good command of mathematics will order an unlimited number of drinks and food items in the $5 - $15 range without expecting the total to hit the three digit mark. I go into one of these places thinking that it will be a cheap dinner --something on the level of going out for Thai food or pizza -- and come out realizing that I could have bought myself a steak somewhere nice for the same price. As I numbly put my credit card down all I can think is: What. Just. Happened.
The sad part is, there happens to be some pretty great food out there out that is served in small plate format. If you don't want to miss out on it entirely, here's my suggestion: avoid the group dinner at all costs. Go with one other person for a drink and a snack (or small lunch), sit at the bar, and share just a couple of plates, slowly, between the two of you.
Amen.
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