Of small plates and anxious diners

Restaurants matter! Since childhood, I’ve had an almost religious attraction to restaurants serving tasty Chinese food, Italian food, steaks, etc. Now in my late 50s I’m speaking out against a form of dining that started to proliferate across the U.S. about 10 years ago.... a restaurant concept called, “small plates”.

It’s not the portion size that bothers me. OK, part of the problem is size-related, but one can obviously consume as many little bites as one wishes and leave satisfied. Nor is the problem entirely due to flavors (I've enjoyed tapas and other tiny treats served at many small plate eateries). The problem is the convoluted experience of the small plate "dinner". Dinner in this case is a misnomer. It's more like playing gastronomic chess and I don't like it. Here's what happens at a typical small plate experience....

Small plates photo -- Wikipedia

After eyeing a group of baby plates spewed across a table that's invariably too small to accommodate them or the rest of us -- I’m drawn to some of these culinary strip teases much more than others. Now -- how many pieces of the great stuff shall I eat?

I want to be mindful of my fellow diners, but if I ignore the less appetizing small plate items, I'll leave hungry. I can do that or fill up on marginal stuff. Some choice.

Wait, did she order those marinated artichokes as her dish? OK, how many small plates shall we order for the next round? One? Two? Twenty?

Who votes for which plates to order? You going to finish those artichokes? Should we eat off of one another's plate? Wait who wants dessert?

I hear a sharp rebuke coming from the reader who is a Small Plate devotee, “Just order more small plates that you like and don't sweat the rest!” No thank you. I’ll go elsewhere and enjoy my own entree in simple, adult-plate-size bliss. Who was given license to complicate something as wonderful as dining out and serve instead, an unclaimed barrage of appetizers?

Blessed with friends on the other side

Wikipedia image This post contains excerpts from an April 10 e-mail response to a dear friend of mine (edited for emphasis and anonymity). “Dear Mortimer, I’ll say hello to the guys for you and I’ll be thinking about you this evening. As for politics, yes, we tend to gravitate toward sources that share our views. However, I also read the New York Times Op-ed pages and watch MSNBC (as hard as those tasks are for me). I suppose you watch Fox on occasion and I know you read the WSJ – so good for both of us. We try. The state-sponsored education you cite that we both benefited from, came largely from our parents' sweat equity – translated into tax dollars – that funded the University of Wisconsin system. True, my friend. But, I'm not arguing for zero taxation, or zero government involvement in our lives. When Progressives argue in favor of entitlement programs, they'll sometimes cite Social Security (under-...

Because it's not theirs to change

Freepik image This week there was controversy stemming from a publisher's decision to edit versions of children's stories written by the late Roald Dahl . The edits, whether inspired by Netflix (who according to Forbes purchased the rights to Dahl's work) or the publisher Puffin Books , sparked a public outcry and PR nightmare. The publisher curated an alternative version to the original work from Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, (a story later adapted to make the film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ), ostensibly to remove insensitive terms. There are several reasons why this ill-conceived, if well-intentioned attempt at inclusiveness -- a term becoming increasingly elastic -- failed miserably. I'm not discussing the evils of censorship today. Altering original art work to appeal to others is ill advised for another reason.....it's not theirs to change (and doing so can backfire). One ...

Economics 101 for the rest of us

W arren Buffet and Carl Icahn are famous investors but fewer people may know Ray Dalio. Mr. Dalio founded an investment firm 40 years ago called Bridgewater Associates. With $160 billion under management, Bridgewater runs one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, Bridgewater website I recently discovered (among 3 million other people) a thirty minute YouTube video that Mr. Dalio produced to explain fundamentals of what he calls the economic machine . This video, which he narrates has been translated into several languages and viewed over 3,200,000 times. The content begins slowly with basic concepts but progresses to explain the primary levers that policy-makers use to manage and stimulate the economy. You can find it here . There are numerous lessons cleverly and clearly explained here. Example: I hadn't appreciated why economists seem obsessed with Wage Growth until I watched this simp...

john maddente | midwestern clarity

Search This Blog