Plates

Deliveries have raised the bar on what is worth spending time and money for. Offering excellent food will not cut it anymore to get people out to a restaurant. Great food is a commodity now. One can get the best burger or pizza in town and eat it at the comfort of their home. Restaurants will need something else to make the trip worth the effort.

When it started in New York in 1964, Benihana offered a concept of restaurant which was radically different than what the US was used to. People sitting all together around a chef, who prepared their dinner in front of them. Food was just part of the experience, the chef’s show did the rest.

This principle lives on today. Supper clubs are quite successful in London and other big cities, getting diners together for a unique pop-up dining experience. Sometimes this even happen at the chef’s home. Sociality and human contact are central to the future of dining-in. Meeting up with friends, having a few drinks, having a chef or a waiter around you and pampering you, enjoying something they could not have at home.

Environments, not just staff, are always more going to play a key role. How can restaurants make the dining atmosphere worth leaving your home? There is an interesting subreddit called “We Want Plates”. Users share pictures of all the crazy ways restaurants are serving food and drinks today. Remember when jars were the cool new way to have a cocktail? Well, now you can find food in pots. vases, shoes, legos, shovels and many other insane objects.

Even if things can get out of hand, what is truly significative about this phenomenon is how much effort restaurants today are putting into how they are serving their meals. Plates are central ( most central?) to a meal experience. Restaurants are trying their best to be creative and get diners attention, offering something unexpected, spectacular, picture-worthy and make them come back. Shovel-plated desserts are here to stay.