‘The chef is a metre away from you’: the cosy allure of micro-restaurants
📖 Full Retelling
<p>Tiny eateries such as Michelin-starred Gwen in Wales, which holds just eight customers, are spreading across UK</p><p>It started with the portion sizes, as all-you-can-eat buffets were reduced to bite-size small plates. Then the menus started to decrease, with pages of dishes shrinking to an A5 sheet of paper.</p><p>Now restaurants are undergoing another round of downsizing. Micro-restaurants, which usually seat fewer than 20 people, are gradually spreading acros
Entity Intersection Graph
No entity connections available yet for this article.
Original Source
‘The chef is a metre away from you’: the cosy allure of micro-restaurants Tiny eateries such as Michelin-starred Gwen in Wales, which holds just eight customers, are spreading across UK It started with the portion sizes, as all-you-can-eat buffets were reduced to bite-size small plates. Then the menus started to decrease, with pages of dishes shrinking to an A5 sheet of paper. Now restaurants are undergoing another round of downsizing. Micro-restaurants, which usually seat fewer than 20 people, are gradually spreading across the UK. The focal point is the communal table. At Gwen, a 3-metre-wide, Michelin-star restaurant in Machynlleth, Wales , a table for eight holds all the bookings for the night and strangers often leave as friends. “We’ve had people come as two couples and book four seats as they come out with people they just met. We’ve had people who ended up booking holidays together,” says Jake Nutt, the restaurant’s owner. The setup lends itself to solo customers. At the Table, a restaurant in Edinburgh that hosts 10 customers at a 7-metre-long table, a single seat is the most popular booking. “We’ve had six single dinners in an evening, that’s over half the restaurant,” says the owner, Sean Clark. “We get a lot of single diners because it’s an inclusive, convenient atmosphere.” The Table is among other micro-restaurants, such as Eorna and Argile , which squeeze into the Scottish capital’s tight spaces. Some miniature establishments prefer to operate as a private dining experience. At Sugo82, an Italian “family kitchen” in east London , a table for five surrounded by traditional Italian memorabilia is located just above the takeaway stand. “For me, this is like my house, if you come in my house you have the same treatment,” says the owner, Stefano Pianese, originally from Naples. “They call us upstairs to have a drink because they feel the love.” The tight proximity between the customer and the chef creates an involved and intimate atmosphere. “In a typical ...
Read full article at source