Tiny Restaurants, Ambitious Dishes

Tiny Restaurants, Ambitious Dishes

 Across the country, some of the best meals are being served in some of the unlikeliest places.

By Joshua Ozersky in the Wall Street Journal

 

THERE ARE 16 seats at the Shack in Staunton, Va. Of the roughly 400 total square feet, 130 are dedicated to kitchen space. The restaurant is so small that there is a pantry area in the dining room. They sell mostly hamburgers here, but a few nights a week the chef, Ian Boden, serves a criminally underpriced tasting menu, one of the best in the U.S.

The story of the Shack ought to be singular, a freak. But it isn't. Mkt. in Seattle, Take Root in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Glen Ellen Star Glen Ellen, Calif., are all tiny spaces with even tinier profits, but they loom large in prestige, influence and attention from local gastronomes. Each one offers a unique and highly personal view into the local food culture that spawned it.

The phenomenon isn't new, nor is it purely an American one. The most famous restaurant in Tokyo, for example, is surely Sukiyabashi Jiro, a nook that seats 10 people. But the trend seems to be gaining ground here, at a time when the cost of opening a big restaurant excludes any but the wealthiest operators. "You make your own opportunities," said Mr. Boden. "You don't need a table setting that costs more than the meal. You don't need a lot of marketing. You don't need any BS. It is what it is. Period."

The very pared-down nature of these microrestaurants makes them better. There is more focus on each meal, less room for error or indifference. These tend to be labors of love, usually by young chefs still burning to push their talent to the limit. The restaurants are easier to open, easier to run and they set their own terms. It's not hard for Brooklyn's Take Root to fill 16 seats three nights a week, so while its two owner-operators accommodate their customers, they don't pander to them. Of course, the built-in exclusivity of a restaurant the size of a living room is its own form of marketing. Everybody wants what's hard to get.

The meals I've had at these places have been nothing short of amazing. A bowl of butter-lettuce soup at the Shack, followed by sweetbreads and gnocchi in brown butter, made me happier than I've been since the Celtics won the title in 2008. The glazed beef cheeks at Beast and the wood-roasted whole trout at Ned Ludd in Portland, Ore., are two of my fondest memories of the city, and I have many fond Portland memories.

Admittedly, the food stands out in part because there is not much in the way of décor. The server is as likely as not to be the chef. The menu will have six things on it, and you will eat every one of them. Which is all to the good. The resources and energy will go instead to putting something in front of you that you can't get anywhere else. And that's rare at any price, or size.