The small plate conspiracy: How nice restaurants are swindling us
If the '80s were all about high-end restaurants serving tiny food in huge white plates, and the 2000s were all about small-plate (tapas-style) restaurants, then I'm afraid the 2010s might be about some terrible merger and magnification of the two where nice restaurants serve even tinier food inside extremely small plates.
This Valentine's Day started out dreamily. I got a tropical flower bouquet delivered to my office cube. I received the sweetest note in a rugged recycled card. My boyfriend even made dinner reservations, which is a strain on the partner of a food writer. I mean this was a big-deal good day.
We went to a new restaurant by the beach, Vu, in Marina del Rey. There's some line about the quality of food being inverse to the quality of the view from the restaurant. Whatever, we said. We were just looking to be together, to be in a pretty place, and to get full.
No go. We ordered five dishes of various sizes. We ate several nice Lamb Lollipops, but the food dropped dimensions from there. We were served a few curried scallops that were supposed to amount to an entree. Our order of vegetables came in a teacup. We had originally ordered their special grilled cheese as a fill-up dish, but we were presented with four cheese-covered squares the size of a matchbooks. I'm not going to get into some of the gimmicky flavor combinations for which we were the guinea pigs (three words: white chocolate curry), because the real stand-out issue was the size of the dishes.
We aren't people who can consume large servings, I promise you, but even we were fighting to achieve fullness. (I was also fighting to absorb the two glasses of wine I'd ingested.) I don't know if you can call it brilliance, or if it was the insight lent to us in moments of survival, but we asked the waiter for some bread. Yes, no problem, coming right up.
That's when we were given corn bread the size of a credit card. At that point, we actually felt swindled. Forgive the quality of the photo at the right, but we only had an iPhone to document it. And it had to be documented. To clarify, that yellow square on the left of the plate is a normal-sized pad of butter. You will notice that it is 2/3 the size of the loaf. It was good cornbread, but you see our problem. We begged for more bread. After that, we still weren't close to full. For a last little dish to round out our meal we ordered the $30 lamb.
I think my date said it best when he asked what good a beautiful view is when you need binoculars to see your dinner. Maybe the view of the marina was to blame, but I've always been suspicious of tapas. They lure you in with the opportunity to enjoy a table full of flavors, but you need four to seven dishes for two people to get full, and they usually cost $7-$20 each. If the food inside the dishes shrinks, those numbers are only going to get worse. It seems like some small-plate chefs are passing their recession problems on to their customers. Well, tapas-style restaurants, we're on to you! It's time to bulk up those servings of flat-iron steak and Parmesan-sprinkled asparagus, and for the sake of all that is good, invest in some dinner rolls.
Do you think small-plate restaurants are worth it?
And more importantly, what did you eat on Valentine's Day?
More to check out:
Tapas recipes
Cute alert: 12 of the world's smallest foods
How restaurants manipulate you into spending more
