Good things, small packages: Eight countries that excel at small dishes

We can't talk about small-plate dining without mentioning tapas in Spain.Credit: iStock

I could swear wait staff in Australia have all been given the same script. "Would you like me to explain the menu to you?"

You feel bad saying no, you wouldn't, even though you know the patter as well as they do. It begins: "All of our dishes are designed to share…"

Uh huh.

"It starts from small plates up the top here, and then the dishes get bigger as you work your way down."

No kidding. This is the way pretty much every menu in Australia has worked for the last 10 years or so. Not that there's anything wrong with it – but, we get it.

Australians are pretty well versed on the greatness of a small plate of shareable food by now. Its popularity is a marker of a nation that is interested in cuisine. Small plates represent the opportunity to try more food, to graze with friends and sample as many flavours and ideas as possible.

We didn't invent small-plate dining – but we copied it from some of the world's finest gastronomic cultures. If you enjoy miniature portions of your favourite cuisine, these are the cities that should be on your hit-list.

Seville, Spain

Obviously, we can't talk about small-plate dining without mentioning tapas. This is probably the most famous iteration of tiny servings of delicious things – but tapas is more than food, it's culture. So much of Spanish social structure is built around the idea of going to a bar, having a drink and a few bites of food and chatting to friends. This is a daily occurrence, and one we should all be getting on board with. Plus, it doesn't hurt that the food is delicious.

Tokyo, Japan

Credit: iStock

So you're in Tokyo and you want to try as much food as possible. You want to eat sashimi, but also katsu, and soba, and karaage, and all sorts of delicious things you've never even heard of before. You could do all of this over a week or so at specialist restaurants. Or, you could go to an izakaya, the casual style of Japanese drinking den where small, varied plates of food are served to go with sake and beer.

Venice, Italy

Credit: iStock

You won't find small plates everywhere in Italy. There's snacky food, for sure – antipasto is custom-designed for those who want to try a bit of everything. However, for proper small-plate dining you need to head to Venice and try cicchetti. This is the Venetian answer to tapas, both in terms of cuisine – everything from a simple plate of olives to delicious things on bread to miniature meals – as well as culture, in that this is a form of dining taken standing up, with drink in hand, chatting to friends.

San Sebastian, Spain

The Basque Country gets its own entry, because pintxos and tapas are not exactly alike. To begin with, Basque small-plates were originally designed as a pre-dinner snack, rather than something to make a whole meal of. The idea was to have a bite and a drink with friends before going home to have dinner. Modern pintxos, however, can become the entire meal, particularly if you're eating a version known as "cocina en minatura": small versions of what are incredibly complex restaurant-quality meals.

Beirut, Lebanon

Lebanese culture is one of those beautiful feeding cultures, where hosts aren't satisfied until their guests collapse in a heap of over-indulgence. One of the keys to encouraging that indulgence is to serve multiple small plates of varied, delicious cuisine: from simple dips and breads to salads to stuffed vine leaves to kibbeh nayeh (a raw beef dish) and more. Actually, much more. Prepare yourself.

Seoul, South Korea

Koreans are obsessed with small dishes of food. This is a country in which the side dishes can be the entire meal. You get all these little plates and you wonder what they're going with and then you realise that they're going with each other. That's the meal. And it's so good that it's served to royalty. Korean small-plate dining is called banchan, and these dishes include kimchi (fermented vegetables), namul (steamed vegetables), bokkeum (stir-fried dishes), plus steamed dishes, braised dishes, fried dishes and more.

Mumbai, India

Credit: Simon Schluter

OK, so technically a thali is not a small plate – it's actually a pretty large plate. Or a banana leaf. And technically it's not really made for sharing – you get to devour this whole thing yourself. Still, there's similarity here in that a thali is designed to give the diner a small taste of multiple dishes: in this case a spread of curries, chutneys, rice, bread and sweets that take in the full range of flavour profiles and textures. You can't go wrong.

Moscow, Russia

Not that many of us will be interested in giving this a try anytime soon, but still… Russia does small-plate dining. It does it well, too. And predictably, the main function of zakuski is to have something to go with your beer or vodka. We're talking sour, salty goodness in the form of pickled cucumbers, pickled herring on rye bread, caviar with blinis, or even meat dumplings.

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