One sad chunk of salmon crudo in citrus soy dressing that everyone’s too polite to take – that’s what a small plates dinner usually comes down to;. Plus, one third of a portion of miso hispi cabbage and a spoonful of seasonal risotto for the fun, unfilling price of around £65.20. “Does anyone want that?” one person hopefully asks, before the waiter carts away the last morsel of the meal that’s worth about a fiver back to the kitchen, never to be seen again.
Small plates, even if never economical, used to be quite cool and adventurous. Stanley Tucci has openly shared his love for Duck Soup in Soho. Paul Mescal frequents Brat in Shoreditch. You’d be hard-stretched to find an Instagram dump shared by Dua Lipa without a candle-lit photo of a collection of small china plates clustered aesthetically together next to some thin-stemmed wine glasses. Singletons even mentioned small plates in their dating profiles to indicate they were edgy and elegant. This was an à la mode, not à la carte, way of eating. Until it wasn’t.
Because there has been a shift. These paltry portions that were pricy but chic no longer hit the same note. Diners have small plate fatigue. We want to be full, and we have less money in the current climate to take risks. Order the recommended three to four dishes per person at £20-£30 a plate? No thanks. In fact, according to data from OpenTable, 56 per cent of UK diners now prefer individual options over sharing plates. But more than the outrageous cost, small plates simply no longer feel special.
Everywhere you turn, there’s another restaurant with a sign in the same scrawling font serving biodynamic wine, roasted fennel, grilled tuna belly and roasted artichoke on industrial metal tables. The formula has become so predictable that it’s routinely parodied by one successful content creator on TikTok who’s made up her own fictional small plates restaurant, Prick. “We’re not actually a restaurant, we’re an eatery space,” she says to the camera with convincing condescension. “We’re on a seasonal mediterranean vibe tonight,” she explains to her digital diners. “So, that means if you haven’t pre-eaten you will be going home hungry.”
Dining out used to mean you’d order a starter, main and maybe some sides to share. That changed in 2009, when Russell Norman opened Polpo in Soho. Inspired by the “ciccheti” culture in Venice, the restaurant sold smaller servings of dishes at (importantly) a reduced price, so they could be shared with a group. The concept was immediately popular in London, with swathes of restaurants following the formula – but not always the price point.
“For the last 10 to 15 years or so, East London has been the gentrifying frontier with these hip, artisanal, aesthetic restaurants,” says Peter Harden of Harden’s restaurant guide.
“Restaurants and business people look at what sells and then everyone piles in, so we’ve got more and more of it – But I think we can say fairly conclusively that the East End of London is well discovered now, and that this type of eating is no longer radical.
“There’s a definite possibility that the trend is running its course,” he adds. “It is, maybe, starting to look a bit passe in terms of its appeal.”
Small plates are, TikTok parodies aside, descending into farce. A new “snack” section appearing on menus can see you set back £10 for one singular chicken nugget, before you’ve even entered into the core main small plate section of the meal. If we continue to distil at this rate, we’ll have a “crumbs” section on the menu by 2027, where waiters serve you the aftermath of a bread basket, rather than the thing itself.
Instagram social commentator Socks House Meeting, who has made many a meme lovingly mocking the East London crowd who pile into small plates restaurants, says there’s now a three-tier structure to the trend: “Actual-experience, sit-down natural wine type restaurants, which have been there from the start of it becoming popularised; the gastropub-type, wooden-interior, public house group-adjacent places, which have jumped in; and then really off-key places you’d not expect to see it, like Wetherspoons and All Bar One, who are now labelling what would’ve been called ‘starters’ or ‘sides’ as small plates.”
As this race to the bottom continues, it’s perhaps unsurprising that there’s been a bounce back towards restaurant maximalism in retaliation. Many recent openings in the capital – Field Notes in London Fields, The Hart in Marylebone (from the team behind The Pelican and The Hero) have opted for simple, filling menus that offer just a handful of starters and reliable mains like steak and potatoes and fish stew, over frills.
Sasha Shaker, Senior Director at OpenTable in the UK and Ireland, says the move away from small plates indicates a broad return to traditional dining, which has coincided with a yearning for the past. “[We’re seeing] nostalgia play a role, especially among Gen Z diners,” she says, “with retro comfort dishes like bangers and mash (29 per cent) and prawn cocktail (28 per cent) among the dishes they’d love to see on menus in 2026.”
In a period of economic uncertainty that seems to have no signs of slowing down, eating out is a treat that we want to feel luxurious. Case in point: Martino’s in Sloane Square, which opened in November to rave reviews and is all about old school glamour. “It was de rigueur to rip off your linen tablecloths a few years ago,” says Harden. “They did it at The Connaught – but they were never foolish enough to do that at The Ritz. It was a bit like dad-dancing; five stars trying to get hip and down with the kids,” he adds of the luxe confidence crisis.
“But in the long term… creature comforts don’t change that much over the years,” Harden muses of the direction we’re headed back to now. “Polished hipster concrete and low lighting is nice, but people are always going to like comfy chairs… Sometimes, you just want lots of people being extremely nice to you and making you feel important.”
