Whose food is it anyway? Why share plate are all wrong
When she was sure she had our attention, the waitress addressed us sternly. “For those of you who haven’t dined with us before”, she began, “our menu is designed for sharing.”
I had to interrupt, even though she’d just begun. It had become such a familiar spiel and I had no patience for it. “We actually don’t really want to share,” I said, “so is it all right if we just order our own dishes?”
What’s so great about communal eating?Credit: iStock
Irritation briefly crossed her face then she smoothed it away with a smile. “Of course you can order your own dishes,” she said, “but due to the menu’s design you may find things coming out at different times, not all together.”
“That’s fine!” I smiled back, refusing to be ruffled, while she proceeded to take our orders.
But inside I was ruffled. When did this insidious trend in restaurants begin, whereby the kitchen, represented by the front of house – and I should not trivialise their roles by calling them waitresses or waiters as these days, in their rustic linen smocks, they’re known as “servers” – dictate the way its customers would like to eat, right down to the order in which the requested meals are served?
Is it a post-COVID-19 thing? That suddenly we can all dive, collectively, into an assortment of platters placed randomly on the table before us, serving utensils exchanged, unmasked breaths circulating freely? Because it seems to me, as restaurants increasingly behave this way, that it’s a form of laziness. No need to pay attention to timing – table four is ready for their mains; table 11 would like the dessert menu; table nine has specified they’d like a leisurely drawn-out meal with gaps between courses – the kitchen can just pump out the dishes when and as it pleases? In other words, the customers are accommodating the kitchen, and this isn’t what Dining Out is about, nor is this the essence of hospitality.
Having worked both sides in the industry – as chef in various kitchens; on the floor as a “server” – I’m very familiar with the levels of fine-tuning required to ensure that the needs and desires of all diners are met as seamlessly as possible. Indeed, it’s one of the arts and skills of the industry, a measure of professionalism, like the ever-proliferating absence of the ability by waitstaff to “read the room”, to gauge with one turn of the head which table needs clearing, which glasses need topping up, which couple is looking neglected. As a cook, I was trained to glance at incoming orders and mentally, swiftly, assess what needed to be done first, to be sent out last, and as a waitress taking orders it was the same.
Now it appears that all of this is too much trouble: all the hard-working kitchen team needs to do is send forth plates of food entirely when it suits them.
I’m aware, writing this, how much the hospitality industry is struggling in this current economic climate (as indeed many industries, let alone individuals, are) – that the regular closure of favourite old eating haunts, supposedly flourishing establishments, entire empires of restaurants, is not letting up. And maybe this current fad for insisting on shared plates arriving higgledy-piggledy is one way that eateries are able to sustainably survive. However, I don’t believe this. Hospitality is all about being hospitable, hosting people, submitting to their dining desires, providing a well-rounded experience of that trilogy of good food, good service, good atmosphere – with, as I recall from my restaurant reviewing days, that little bit of magic thrown in.
Our recent meal, forewarned as we were about dishes arriving at differing times, could have nearly been that well-rounded experience – location superb; atmosphere buzzy but intimate; food mostly excellent – except that it wasn’t. Three out of four main dishes arrived at the same time but as our “server” had confused one of the orders, the fourth came out 15 minutes later, shortly after our three sides – all, obediently, to be shared – had. Our polite requests for the fourth meal were met with barely concealed displeasure, and by the time we were ready for our bill – definitely not sticking around for dessert, thank you very much – our server had mysteriously dematerialised.
The thing is, it’s the restaurant that ultimately loses out: we simply won’t go back. If restaurants wish to stay in business, they could do worse than remember that they are there for their customers, not the other way around.
Victoria Cosford is a former Good Food Guide reviewer, a food writer, a long-time contributor to the Byron Shire Echo and author of gastro-memoir Amore & Amaretti: A Tale of Love and Food in Tuscany.
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