Can we please put an end to this hospitality trend in 2025?
Everyone taking a bite from the bowl of langoustine bouillabaisse, with the single spoon served alongside it making its way around the table. The horror, according to haters of shared dining such as Esther Goedegebuure: ‘Can we please put an end to this hospitality trend this year?’
You probably did shared dining over the holidays too. But surely—and I’d like to add: hopefully—different from in the big-city restaurants that have long since stopped being quite so hip. At least, I assume that at your table everyone is free to help themselves generously from large serving dishes of potato gratin, vegetables and main courses with or without animal proteins. Again and again, until the guests can roll home completely satiated.
Shared dining
Try doing that in the establishments where ‘the concept’ of shared dining is used. A trend that, unfortunately, has not yet run its course and that, as far as I’m concerned, is synonymous with a rumbling stomach and a hefty bill. Pretentious dishes are served on such tiny plates that you wonder: how is this actually supposed to be shared? Everyone gets the tip of a knife’s worth of celeriac purée with king bolete? Everyone takes a bite from the bowl of langoustine bouillabaisse, with the single spoon served alongside it making its way around the table?
Besides lowering your hygiene standards, shared dining means going hungry, no matter how many miniature dishes you order. Afraid of being seen as greedy, you don’t take more than a dollop from the little dish of ceviche, or you cut off no more than two centimeters of the roasted slice of celeriac. Because no one dares be the greedy one who spears the last sprig of samphire with their fork, there is inevitably always some sent back to the kitchen.
Pastry plate
Something else that irritates me terribly is the description on the menu that you often see in these kinds of establishments. Dishes are nothing more than a list of ingredients. “Butter beans, kale, saffron sauce and croutons.” Anyone who orders it out of curiosity ultimately has to make do with a pastry plate holding precisely six beans in a puddle, decorated with a few curls of cabbage. If only large baskets of crispy pieces of bread came to the table, ready for dipping into delicious oil… but the only alternative is to order the side dish ‘toast grilled on the barbecue with homemade butter’. At €6 per slice.
For restaurants, shared dining is simply a fancy way of increasing margins a little. Handy if you’re on a diet yourself and don’t want to draw too much attention to it, but for big eaters like me, it’s a ‘concept’ that offers very little satisfaction. Tasting and sharing lots of different flavors is a pleasure, but please let it be from generous portions. Could that perhaps become a trend in 2025?
Also read:
- Exhausting: when restaurant staff are overly nice
- Annoying: dining out with people who drink too much and make you pay for it
- You really don’t want this when dining out: staff whose breath stinks
Source: Franska.nl
