The Pretentious Showmanship in Today’s Restaurants

I see great looking food as an art form. However, I also agree that there is just too much pomp and circumstance and stress around some of the tonier restaurants in New York City.

Dining last month at a trendy, high-priced, full-of-itself restaurant in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District was the proverbial last straw. The restaurant provided a noisy, pretentious, and uncomfortable experience. The tables were small, while the wine glasses and serving plates were very large. So something had to give.

It’s all well and good for fashionable eateries to want to be on top of current trends, but only if the “look” works with the restaurant’s design and size of furniture. The fashion of serving oversized dishes and multiple wine goblets of prodigious size only works when the restaurant’s tables are of sufficient size to accommodate the dimensions of the oversized plates and glasses.

What is the purpose of a small portion of roasted lobster tail – out of the shell on herbs and sweet chives and artfully arranged like a toothsome Picasso – if the huge plate overhangs the table and juts into your gut? Or if your also huge wine glass has to be extricated from under the plate’s rim by a twist of your wrist?

Sometimes, the plates are so massive that the wait staff can hardly lift them, or they have to reach across the table to drop their heavy burden instead of maneuvering around the table to set the dish properly in front of you. Are we paying for fine dining, heavy lifting, or pretentious showmanship?

Even though the table setup was inconvenient, the product of the kitchen was considerably good. The salad with the quail egg on top was exceptional, as was the lobster dish. I just wish they had given as much thought to the table setup! 

It reminds me of years ago, when eyes and sensibilities were frequently assaulted by the sight of Rubenesque figures squeezed into miniskirts in defiance of the laws of supply (size of the garment) and demand (size of the butt) to satisfy the fashion trend of the day.

Good sense dictates a more realistic approach and demands that restaurants select their tableware according to the size of the table on which it’s to be placed. It would be much better to choose unusual shapes or textures to enhance the presentation of a dish, rather than use size as the only standard. Or just select a larger table on which to display their wares.