It started with the portion sizes, as all-you-can-eat buffets were reduced to bite-size small plates. Then the menus started to decrease, with pages of dishes shrinking to an A5 sheet of paper.
Now restaurants are undergoing another round of downsizing. Micro-restaurants, which usually seat fewer than 20 people, are gradually spreading across the UK.
The focal point is the communal table. At Gwen, a 3-metre-wide, Michelin-star restaurant in Machynlleth, Wales, a table for eight holds all the bookings for the night and strangers often leave as friends.
“We’ve had people come as two couples and book four seats as they come out with people they just met. We’ve had people who ended up booking holidays together,” says Jake Nutt, the restaurant’s owner.
The setup lends itself to solo customers. At the Table, a restaurant in Edinburgh that hosts 10 customers at a 7-metre-long table, a single seat is the most popular booking. “We’ve had six single dinners in an evening, that’s over half the restaurant,” says the owner, Sean Clark. “We get a lot of single diners because it’s an inclusive, convenient atmosphere.”
The Table is among other micro-restaurants, such as Eorna and Argile, which squeeze into the Scottish capital’s tight spaces.
Some miniature establishments prefer to operate as a private dining experience. At Sugo82, an Italian “family kitchen” in east London, a table for five surrounded by traditional Italian memorabilia is located just above the takeaway stand.
“For me, this is like my house, if you come in my house you have the same treatment,” says the owner, Stefano Pianese, originally from Naples. “They call us upstairs to have a drink because they feel the love.”
The tight proximity between the customer and the chef creates an involved and intimate atmosphere. “In a typical restaurant, there’s a barrier between a chef and customer, for us that’s gone, we’re a metre away from you,” says Nutt.
This is the most gratifying aspect for Nutt because he gets to see customers’ reactions first-hand. “It’s almost like a cheat code for us,” he says. “I imagine that in a normal restaurant, a chef will send out a plate of food and never hear about that plate of food ever again.”
Although most pint-size establishments exist because it was the only space available to the owners, they offer an inherent appearance of exclusivity, which has worked in many businesses’ favour. “The size has really turned into one of our most unique selling points. It gives it this feeling of people being included in something unique and special,” says Clark.
However, operating a kitchen in a tiny space comes with obvious struggles. “It can be like a micro pressure cooker at times, there’s nowhere to hide. If a glass breaks or you drop a plate everyone knows. You’ve got to just take it on the chin,” says Nutt.
Then there is the high cost of running a restaurant, something that even the most confined spaces struggle to squeeze. Sam Betts, the owner of the Small Canteen, a 15-seater, 7-metre by 3-metre restaurant in Sandyford, Newcastle, says rising business rates have put pressure on his small eatery compared with when he opened five years ago.
“When I started, the staff costs and the rates were low, the rent was quite low. So it was suitable with less risk involved,” says Betts. “Now it’s just increasingly expensive.”
Betts also notices that fewer people are visiting restaurants. A survey released last October found that 38% of people were eating out less often compared with the previous year.
In some respects, the big restaurant downsize is a response to these challenges: as the customer demand diminishes, so does the capacity. But the limited space means there are fewer options to raise revenue. In a larger venue, “you can always try and get more people in, but up here we can’t do that”, says Clark.
A full house each night is the key to keeping the micro-restaurant alive; most of the compact establishments only take pre-paid bookings to avoid cancellation and losses. “A risk of it is if you get a cancellation of two, that’s 25% of the restaurant, we’ve lost the revenue for that night,” says Nutt.
Consequently, to eat in these small spaces often comes at a high price. A reservation for the 10-course tasting menu at Gwen is £135, and at the Table a seven-course tasting menu is £110 per person.
It is up to £75 a head at Sugo82 and what micro-restaurants lack in space, they make up with care in the food. “If you eat in a big restaurant, you just go there, have your food, then you go,” says Pianese. “If you come here, we explain every plate, the history, where it comes from.”