Have we reached peak small plates?
Small and sharing plates, that perennially controversial restaurant trend, are the subject of a new row. Plus: some Chardonnays that I've been drinking lately
Given that menus based on small and sharing plates constitute one of the longest-running London foodie rows, you at least have to hand it to Hugh Corcoran for putting a fresh spin on it. The Irish chef and co-owner of new Islington eaterie, The Yellow Bittern, lashed out on Instagram earlier this month, saying that “Little sharing plates has [sic] ruined dining.”
He continued: “Or rather it has ruined diners. It is now apparently completely normal to book a table for four people say and then order one starter and two mains to share and a glass of tap water.” He demands that diners instead “justify your presence in the room that afternoon… it is expected that you are there to eat and drink with some sort of abandon.”
It's a view, I suppose, though it moved even industry publication Restaurant to observe that “This position would seem to go against what some restaurateurs would class as basic hospitality.” Much of the coverage in the national press has been ruder.
I haven’t been to the Yellow Bittern, and given that it is open only Monday-Friday lunchtimes; accepts booking only by phone and payment only in cash; is pricey; and its 17 seats are now reportedly booked out for weeks anyway, I won’t be visiting soon. But I doubt that many London diners would agree with Corcoran that they visit small-plates restaurants as a cheap option. On the contrary, I’d say I usually end up ordering and spending more than I do on an old-fashioned, two-or-three-course meal. Maybe I’m just greedy and profligate. But food and wine journalist Fiona Beckett agrees: “it's been a good way of getting people to spend more than they realise.”
Anyway, the small-plates trend has drawn plenty of fire over the past decade. Veteran restaurant critic Marina O’Loughlin has long been annoyed by them, railing as long ago as 2016 against “the almost mandatory-in-London ‘succession of small plates’”. As food blogger Sue Quinn demanded last week, “Come on chefs. We’re ready for our own plates of food now... We miss those crazy heady days… when multiple plates weren’t crowded on to the table like a toddler’s buffet.”
They’re certainly ubiquitous, at least in the capital. Indeed travelling in France last summer, I realised when eating out how much we Brits (OK, middle-class Londoners) have got used to sharing plates – since the concept is vanishingly rare the other side of the channel. And you know what? I missed them.
I missed the variety and the chance to try many dishes from one chef in one sitting. Conventional plates introduce that slight awkwardness over whether it’s acceptable to give even your spouse a forkful of your food across the table. You usually end up waiting longer between courses (especially in France). And I sometimes now don’t really feel like tackling a whole main course-worth of meaty protein, having become more vegetarian at home (an effect of my veggie youngest daughter being the last in the nest these last three years and it not being worth cooking different things for just three of us.)
Part of the problem with small plates’ evolution in British restaurants may be that they somehow got lost in translation from their Mediterranean home. Because this mode of eating is a historical product (look, this is a food and wine blog by an academic historian turned tabloid journalist.)
Accepted western notions of what constitutes a “normal” restaurant meal were developed in France in the mid-late nineteenth century, under the guidance of probably the greatest chef of all time, Auguste Escoffier. Prior to this era, the custom in French restaurants and banquets was for all dishes to be served at the same time, and shared. This had been gradually challenged in the early nineteenth century by “service à la russe”, supposedly popularised in France by Russian ambassador Alexander Kurakin, where courses were served consecutively but plated at the table by waiters. While this had become the norm by the 1870s, Escoffier adapted it with the invention of the “à la carte” menu, where diners chose a small number of dishes which were then plated in the kitchen and served consecutively – usually, some form of soup and/or starter followed by a protein-based main course, and dessert. And not much of this concept changed in the West for more than a century.
Enter the idea of tapas, the Spanish small plates that started off as a snack served in bars with a drink, as they still are in some joints (a “tapa” is a lid – the dishes seem to have been thus named because you were handed your drink with a little plate of tortilla or sausage on the top.) Indeed restaurant critic and blogger Andy Lynes dates the small plates revolution to 1999 and the appearance of Bin 941 “tapas parlour” in Vancouver, though as he reminds me, “[London south-west French restaurant] Club Gascon were doing what sounds like small plates as far back as 1998.”
In the noughties, tapas arrived in London in force, with the openings of Brindisa’s shop and first restaurant (2004), Salt Yard (2005), Barrafina, Ibérica and Dehesa (2008), and then José, Copita and Capote y Toros (2011). The new arrival that did it with most style, however, was not Spanish but Italian: the late Russell Norman’s Polpo (2009), serving Venetian cichetti (snacks and small plates), made a significant impact on the London restaurant scene. Meanwhile the shared-food cultures of the far East – especially Japan and Korea – must have had some influence along the way too.
But what tapas and cichetti share culturally is that they’re snacks eaten while drinking – and in Spanish tapas culture, grazed on a couple at a time while moving from bar to bar. This has never translated to a British or north American setting: partly because no city here has the density of tapas bars required to tapear (as the Spanish verb now has it), partly because Brits remain attached to ordering everything at once for a single restaurant meal. Indeed my friend Marcos Fernández, CEO of Ibérica, tells me they had to switch to serving all of a table’s tapas at once because people complained when they arrived a dish or two at a time.
Similarly, the other strong cultural influences on small plates, Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern mezze, are shared dishes not usually intended to constitute a whole meal. When eating out, most Greeks would be puzzled, not to say annoyed, if larger fish or meat dishes didn’t appear after the olives, dolmades and fava dip.
But those traditions were already being adapted in London in the early tapas era by the other key figure in the small plates movement, Yotam Ottolenghi. The Anglo-Israeli chef’s Middle-Eastern fusion plates found fame at Nopi from 2011, having already gained a following via his Guardian recipe column since 2006. And while not all the dishes in Jerusalem (2012) and his other popular cookbooks, or his restaurants, are designed for sharing, plenty are.
If you’re a chef, you don’t have to be an international superstar like Ottolenghi to see the attractions of small and sharing plates. They’re a chance to show off in more dishes than a handful of mains. You can serve them to diners as they come out of the kitchen, rather than dishes piling up on the pass as staff wait for chefs to complete a table’s different choices of mains. And, pace Hugo Corcoran, it’s not difficult to get people to spend more, as they wonder whether five dishes each or whatever their server has advised them is really enough.
For all the criticism, however, it seems that small plates are also popular with diners: 15 years after their appearance in London they’re still, er, big. This may be thanks be in part to a major concurrent development: everyone having a camera in their pocket via the invention of the smartphone (the first iPhone: 2007) from which they can broadcast photos of their dinner to a jealous world via Instagram (launched 2010). Some of those servings may be tiny – are you going to divide that £4 quail’s egg with cod’s roe and sorrel between three, or just order one each? – but they can be very photogenic. One recent American guest at London’s uber small-plates destination, Sessions Arts Club, raged on Tripadvisor: “Are you looking to spend a crap ton of money for a few really cool Instagram photos?” It would appear that some of us are indeed.
So have we reached peak small plates? Marina O’Loughlin responds to this question via Instagram, after I had admired her picture of an enormous sharing plate at Hawksmoor, “I honestly doubt it. Though there are more vocal objections these days.” The trend has been driven not just by cultural influences and innovative restaurateurs, but by the harsh economics of the trade. Already-thin margins have been squeezed yet further, after Covid’s devastation, by inflation and Brexit. If those of us that like to share dishes are going to have enough to go around the table, we’re probably just going to have to pay more.
What (Chardonnays) I’ve been drinking lately
For some reason I’ve come across a number of impressive New World Chardonnays over the past few weeks. I was going to write a blog about them but then decided I didn’t really have anything very original to say on the subject. So here they are.
The Wine Society Generation Series Limarí Chardonnay 2022 - my friend, wine critic Olly Smith, has raved about this wine and it really does offer serious class for under £15. Buttery Meursault-style depth but with lovely elegance and finesse, from one of Chile’s most arid, northerly wine regions. Possibly my favourite of these four and certainly the best value (The Wine Society, £13.95.)
Walter Scott “La Combe Verte” Chardonnay 2021, Oregon - winemaker Ken Pahlow crafts this wine in Oregon’s Williamette Valley, better known for its Pinot Noir. This is very fine Chardonnay in a style that’s probably closest to Chablis: fresh, crisp, mineral, precise (NY Wines, Vinum, and elsewhere, from £34.30. Justerini and Brooks also have it in bond and sell it by the glass in their posh new wine bar in Burlington Arcade.)
Capensis “Silene” Chardonnay 2020, Stellenbosch - this is world-class South African Chardonnay made from grapes from two mountain vineyards, with 10 months in French oak. Bright citrus flavours and creamy depth, beautifully balanced and long (London End Wines, NY Wines and elsewhere, from £29.)
Cambria “Katherine’s Vineyard” Chardonnay 2021, Santa Maria Valley - if you think Californian Chardonnay is all about oaky, buttery wines at 15 per cent alcohol, try this. Made from vines over 40 years old, with just a touch of oak, this is more like a Chablis in style than most Californians: taut, elegant and retrained, but with nice apple and pear fruit and quite long (London End Wines, Vinum and elsewhere, from £27.)
Transparency declaration: the South African and Californian chardonnays were free samples.
Interesting reflections on small plates. With most main courses at well over £25 these days it's a trend I don't see going away any time soon though like you it does annoy me when the food all arrives at once. (Solution: order 2-3 plates then 2-3 more)
(I managed to get into the Yellow Bittern yesterday at a couple of hours notice btw by simply phoning them up. Which we now seem to regard as a weirdly old-fashioned way of booking a table)
An interesting read Andy, though I am surprised you didn't mention Brindisa who were celebrating 20 years of Brindisa Tapas last night and surely predate any of the other Spanish tapas bars? And, the fact that Monika Linton of Brindisa was already importing Spanish hams, cheeses, olives made it possible for the others. As you say, in Spain, tapas is a precursor to going out to a restaurant and even conventional restaurants have introduced the extra 'snack' course like their take on tapas which are often very enticing, and you feel a bit mean spirited not to try one or two. I prefer larger sharing plates or my own dishes these days and never take any notice of server instructions.