Sharing food in restaurants - yes or no?

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly. M. F. K. Fisher

The inspiration for this particular post came from an episode of Gavin and Stacey that we watched the other evening. Virtually the whole ensemble cast was assembled together and was ordering a take-away Indian meal. It all started amicably enough until one of the characters made it very clear that what he was ordering was for him alone and he was not going to share it with anyone else. Which caused consternation and argument, although one other character agreed. They were obviously regarded as mean spirited though. It was all pretty funny the way it was handled, but it did point to an everyday dilemma. Well the best comedy does, does it not?

When we go to an Indian restaurant as an extended family we all tend to order a separate dish, with an eye to a balanced total - except for my older son who insists that the chicken butter cream that he is ordering is for him alone. Which does not, of course, prevent him from trying other dishes as well. We're a family. He is tolerated. We just laugh it off. And generally speaking, probably because we know each other so well we all end up with more or less what we want. Maybe not quite though because the numbers are sometimes quite large and the portions smallish, so not enough for everyone to get a taste of each dish. But, as I said, we are a family, so nobody is shy about claiming their favourite to try first.

Indian food, of course, and a whole lot of other cuisines - Middle-Eastern, Chinese, Thai seems to be designed to share. It seems to be the accepted thing. A range of dishes is put on the table and everyone dives in. Well there's probably a pecking order as to who dives in first, but still that's what generally happens. I mean Chinese restaurants are even designed with those huge Lazy Susans that help you to get a bit of everything.

I guess it's particularly difficult if you are vegetarian or have some other food restriction whether it's a diet or allergy thing. Or is it? After all most people would recognise that as the 'odd one out' (I am assuming the rest of the party is not vegetarian) you are entitled to your own special dish. Although I suspect that the rest of us might have a taste too - which is rather mean. Nevertheless the vegetarian would certainly get first go at 'their' dish.

So should you declare that the dish you ordered is yours alone, or should you go along with the general concept of sharing?

"Sharing is such a loaded word, is it not, that if you don't share then you are automatically thought of as deficient in some way...

one of the well-positioned diners ends up sated, while the rest wonder what the vindaloo parked at the far end of the table for the entire night actually tasted like." Johanna Leggatt - The Guardian

Or the vindaloo that everyone else had a taste of but which did not come your way.

"The idea behind sharing plates is to bring into the restaurant the informality of the family table. Accidentally, they’ve also imported the entire dynamic of mealtime sibling rivalry; the neurosis and anxiety that comes with attempting to get your share." Jay Rayner - The Guardian

Yes I remember that sibling rivalry. Being a potato freak I would anxiously hope that one of my siblings, or even my parents would not actually want all the potatoes they had been given and then I could snaffle them for myself. It caused a bit of argument because they saw me eyeing their potatoes!

Personally I think if you are in one of those restaurants where it is generally accepted that one shares, then you just have to go with the flow when in a group. It's really rather useless coveting one dish. Because, yes, unless it's a family, it is really rather rude to not share the dish you have ordered. In a Chinese restaurant you could spin the Lazy Susan to get what you want in front of you, but in a restaurant without that, you just have to take your chances. Some Indian restaurants we visit regularly do try to put the dish a particular person ordered in front of them, so at least they get one bite of it. Anyway it's usually all delicious, so it doesn't matter really.

Then there's the romantic dinner for two in a more conventional restaurant where you order course by course. Like we will tonight to celebrate our anniversary at Mercer's. So if there are prawns, for example, on the menu, which I love but David hates, do I order them or do I order something that he likes as well, because he does like to share? The danger here is that, having decided to go half and half because of the menu description you actually hand over half of something you really, really liked only to get something you didn't really go for. But then it is also nice to taste as many dishes as you can from the menu. Maybe just one taste of your partner's dish is Ok, but then leave it at that, even if his or hers tastes better than yours. Hard to know what's the best thing to do here. Dessert is not generally a problem for us in this kind of setting, because really, at that stage, we are just being greedy and can only manage to share one dessert, so it has to be agreed upon before ordering. Or you go for that lovely option - Le Grand Dessert - which generally has a bit of all that's on offer. Not quite sharing one dessert though because it's usually a minimum for two dish so not as small as the dishes on their own.

Another issue that I hadn't really thought about when I started on this, is the size of the plates - how many bits on one plate - but as I searched for inspiration it rapidly became obvious that this was an issue.

For it is fashionable in trendy restaurants and cafés to go for the small plates meal. We even have a restaurant here in Eltham that is actually called small plates. I guess it started with tapas, and then came the Middle Eastern craze which continues to this day. And once those had taken hold everyone started doing it. The idea was to be convivial and to taste a whole range of new things. Just a taste. Which you can understand as being a potentially really good thing. If it's just a taste then it doesn't matter if it's not a good taste does it? Just move on to the next one. If you've chosen the wrong thing on the menu in a conventional restaurant then you are taking a chance that it won't be good. If you've got a whole range of options then the odds are that at least some things will be good.

But there are traps. If they are really small plates, then should you order more than one of each variety? Will you get trapped into actually having a more expensive meal than you thought because you had to order so many dishes? Is there room on the table? Do the dishes go together, complement each other? Does it matter anyway?

You would hope that restaurants would take into account how many people these small plates have to serve, and make sure that an appropriate number is ordered. (Great for them of course as they can up the number.) Because it seems the usual number of items on a plate is three - tricky. It's like buying steaks in a supermarket - they always have an inconvenient number so that you have to buy more.

"Obviously, we’ve all confronted this in Chinese restaurants for decades. Two of you go out for dim sum; every plate of dumplings comes in threes. Why? Because the Chinese word for four sounds like the word for death and is therefore considered unlucky; the word for three, however, sounds like that for birth. We might wish to dismiss this as superstitious cobblers, but we are alive to the cultural sensitivities." Jay Rayner - The Guardian

When I go out with my Italian class for a yum cha, all the ordering is done by our Chinese member and I notice that she sometimes orders two or more of one particular dish. Because yes, the dumplings come in threes.

Small plates are definitely a thing though:

"Small plates became not an option, but a fixed ideology. Suddenly, everything from fish and chips to Szechuan noodle dishes had to be miniaturised, whether it was improved or not. Chefs scoured the globe for small plates – bao buns, precise Basque pintxos, Lebanese mezze – that were then ripped from their context and tumbled together on menus, despite, in their flavours, heft or lack of it, these dishes in no way complementing one another." Tony Naylor

Even restaurants that still stick to the more conventional menu, these days often serve three (or more) different varieties of the same thing on one plate - beef three ways, potatoes three ways ... Which can be a bit unsatisfactory as the mini servings are not really big enough to get a proper taste.

So how do I feel about it all? Well I don't dine out often enough to be able to say really. And I don't tend to dine out at 'small plates' places. My only experience of such things was marginally unsatisfactory, mostly because the group (the family) were not really sure how to go about ordering, and had to rely on the restaurant staff for guidance. Which can be good, but it can also be a trap. I remember once being trapped into a buffet meal at a local Indian restaurant which turned out to be a whole lot of things I would not have ordered. And it was expensive too. Or the other trap is that the buffet meal is just all the ordinary stuff when you would really like to try something different.

And I confess I find the tapas a bit frustrating too. I guess it's good to try something new that way. But wouldn't it be nice if you could also order a large plate of the same thing?

Well the Christmas dinner is coming up with the slightly diminished family - and that will involve a bit of sharing, because it will all just be set out like a buffet - only without the hotel staff ready to replenish the dishes when they get finished up.