Where Small Plates Went Wrong

You know the moment.

You sit down. The server smiles. And before you've even looked at the menu, you hear it:

"Just so you know, we're a small plates concept and dishes will come out as and when they're ready."

If you eat out in London with any regularity, you've heard this. Probably more times than you can count. And if you've seen Alice Etches' sketch on the subject, you'll know exactly why it became a cliché worth lampooning!

But here's the thing. Small plates, done properly, is a genuinely brilliant way to eat, and Henry knows this better than most!

He was Head Chef at Crispin in Spitalfields when they opened in 2018 as one of the restaurants at the forefront of what people were then starting to call the small plates revolution. Later at Peckham Cellars, he won a Bib Gourmand for the style. So, when we talk about this subject it’s not as outsiders!

When small plates emerged as a dining style in London, it offered something genuinely exciting. It gave chefs the freedom to explore…to pull in flavours from different cuisines, to make a single ingredient the star, to change the menu with the seasons and see what worked. It also suited the way people were eating. Mixed groups, sharing, tasting across multiple dishes, making an evening of it. When it was done well, it was a revelation.

There was an efficiency angle too. Fewer chefs could feed larger dining rooms. The unwritten rule of two to three dishes per person gave restaurants a model that worked commercially as well as creatively. It spread quickly…and before long, the nduja scotch egg with pickled walnut ketchup was appearing on pub menus from Peckham to Portsmouth.

And then, gradually, things went wrong.

Two things, specifically.

The first is that chefs forgot a small plates menu is still a menu. Henry is passionate about this. Any combination of dishes on a small plates menu should work together…which means it requires just as much thought, care and consideration as a traditional dinner menu. Perhaps more.

Taking influence from multiple cuisines is exciting in the right hands. In the wrong ones, it just creates confusion. Dishes with flavours that fight each other. Ingredients that have no business sharing a table. And crucially, it puts the obligation on the diner to figure out which combinations work…rather than the chef having done that thinking already.

The second and by far the worst…the tyranny of dishes coming out when they're ready.

This became the defining cliché of the small plates era…and it's worth being honest about what it actually is. It's an operational convenience for the kitchen. It allows chefs to batch identical dishes and send them to multiple tables simultaneously.

Instead of asking "what's the best experience for the guest?" it asks "what's the easiest way to get food out when we're busy?" For us, it's the opposite of hospitality.

A tapas bar would never dream of doing this. The food comes in the right order for eating…not in the right order for the kitchen. That's always been the point.

Because when small plates is done properly, when the menu works as a whole, when the restaurant takes responsibility for the order, when the wine is coordinated with the food…it can be genuinely wonderful.

Sharing dishes with friends, tasting broadly, amplifying the social pleasure of eating together. It's why, despite everything, small plates has endured. It's now a permanent part of London's dining culture rather than a trend that came and went.

Wilson's was never going to be a small plates restaurant. Despite Henry's background at some of the best in London, it was never what any of us wanted. We talked about it from the very first conversations and always came back to the same answer.

We wanted to go back (or perhaps forwards) to something more traditional.

Starters, mains & desserts.

Getting the timing right across two, three or four courses in a busy dining room is genuinely difficult. It takes coordination, communication and sometimes a bit of instinct. It demands more from the kitchen and more from the front of house.

But it's the craft we love. And we wouldn't have it any other way!