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A night out used to mean dinner and a movie. These days the restaurant experience itself is the entertainment, and customers are looking to restaurants to provide an evening's worth of theatricality, diversion and amusement. Many people aren't comfortable enough with their cooking skills to invite guests home for dinner, so a favorite restaurant becomes the meeting place, social hall and dining-room-away-from-home.
Consequently, many diners gravitate to restaurants that fill their social needs as well as their culinary cravings. Tapas bars and dim sum parlors are interactive dining environments where the customer connects with the server and shares plates with fellow guests. Even a sushi dinner, although it can be a relatively solitary experience, provides for some one-on-one interplay with the person who makes the meal, a link too often missing in restaurants, and one many customers enjoy.
The small-plates phenomenon taps into this need to be part of a community, to share sustenance and conversation, to eat communally. In light of this trend, look internationally—whether to Spanish tapas, Middle Eastern mezze, Mexican antojitos or Korean barbecue—for dishes that engage and involve the diner and make the table a festive place. |
