The irritations at shared dining restaurants

I have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with shared dining restaurants. Love because I often suffer from choice stress when looking at menus and I prefer to taste as much as possible. It has happened to me just a bit too often that I hesitated between two dishes and chose one while my dining companion had the other... And then I regretted it. A bloody annoying feeling. At the same time, of course, I can also show off my good choice when the other has the wrong dish in front of them, but that happens much less often.

You regret less quickly when you are in a shared dining restaurant. I increasingly notice that this type of restaurant gets on my nerves. For example, I was recently at a new restaurant in Amsterdam for the first time. The menu featured Spanish tapas. I guess that even if you've never been to Spain, you know what that means, and yet someone from the staff comes to our table, kneels down so that he is squatting at our eye level, and with a big smile asks: ‘Are you familiar with our concept?’

I really can't hear that word concept anymore: why ‘your concept’? Tapas have existed in Spain since the 13th century, and in the Netherlands, you are far from the only or first one to have the groundbreaking idea of serving Spanish tapas. So to give a short answer to your question: yes, I am familiar with the concept.

Then unfortunately we move on to irritation number two: why am I seated with my dining companion at a table the size of my side table at home? That table is already full with our two glasses of wine with the accompanying bottle and two glasses of water with also that accompanying bottle. And there isn't even a plate on the table yet.

Why do restaurants go for the whole shared dining idea if they also plan to accommodate as many guests as possible at tiny tables? Those two things just really don't go together in my opinion. Nine times out of ten, those restaurants also cheerfully say: ‘And we will bring each dish as soon as it is ready.’ I think that's fine. But doesn't the staff see that there is barely room for two plates? And then to come with two more plates and jokingly say: ‘This will be a bit of a squeeze.’ No. It just doesn't fit because you have crammed twenty tables into a space that should have had about twelve.

Just before Covid, I had my worst experience ever. It was in a restaurant in The Hague, where I went with twelve girlfriends for a weekend. We had already looked at the menu and saw that it was nothing special: burgers, pasta, tomato soup, bitterballen, carpaccio, chicken satay... Nothing exciting, but perfectly fine. We had to go to another party early, so our idea (or our ‘concept’, if you want to call it that) was also to just lay a quick, good foundation with wine. This location seemed to be able to arrange that for us.

But when we received the menu, the waitress asked ‘if we were familiar with their concept’. The question that immediately caused irritation, but now also confusion. Why, concept? You order a burger with fries and you get it in front of you after a while and eat it. But no, they were also participating in the ‘shared dining concept’.

‘How does that work with dishes like soup, burgers, pasta, and satay?’ I asked confused. ‘All dishes come when they are ready and they will be placed in the middle so you can share.’ ‘...So we all get a spoon to scoop from the soup?’ ‘Yes, exactly!’

Now that I think back to it, I am confused again. Of course, we all just ordered our own dish, it was still placed in the middle, and everyone just took what they had ordered. And yes: we also got a lecture ‘that this was not their concept and that they had explained that very clearly to us’.

Sometimes I wonder how that waitress is doing and if she has come up with any more new concepts.