ENTREES

Confession time. And it IS a confession for a food critic and diet book author. I have become a nibbler. I sit in restaurants and order a few entrees. I rarely get to the main course. Not interested in a main course that is the size of a horse.

I used to joke: Just walk it through the kitchen. And I would eat slabs of beef. I did start to change when I was engaged to the beautiful actress and animal activist Lynda Stoner. It didn’t seem right to sit across from her in a restaurant and have a piece of bleeding meat in front of you.

In fact, maybe thanks to her, a big steak no longer appeals. The only beef that appeals to me is the dish called Shabu Shabu in Japanese restaurants. Slivers of quality beef that you cook in a fondue bowl of stock and seaweed and cabbage and shitake mushrooms and bean sprouts. My favourite meal of all time.

But back to what they now call “grazing”. I saw a foodie article in the Melbourne Herald Sun recently on the same topic. The headline was “Small is beautiful” which is where I am coming from.

And it talks about the current popularity of picky-picky tapas bars.

The article said: Diners are changing their habits. In bars, cafes and restaurants across the city, people are looking for flexibility in the way they eat.

Instead of the traditional eating model of entrée, main course and dessert, more diners are opting to share dishes or order a variety of small ones.

One restaurant owner is quoted as saying: “It’s mainly the younger crowd eating the smaller dishes”.

Well, I’m not part of that demographic but I have always loved the Chinese idea of sharing dishes. Sharing tastes. I was only a teenager when I rejected the idea of individual lamb chops and three veg.

The western way was boring. And how did your mother know how much you need or wanted to eat?

Even the too-fat Americans had one good idea. They put the food in communal family bowls on the table and YOU decided what you wanted to eat. And how much. A civilised eating habit.

But grazing – following the “small is beautiful” routine – is a good one.

A slab of steak now really bores me.

One of my favourite restaurateurs is Fonda Kourmadias. He has just opened the Fawkner on Toorak Road which is where the demolished Tifffany’s on the Park used to be.

The restaurant, which I reviewed here recently, has cleverly installed drinking tables. I can now sit there and order some South Australian Coffin Bay oysters and some duck pate to go with a good glass of pinot noir.

I can nibble. And that’s what I want to do. And a lot of other people apparently. Restaurateurs must adapt to a dramatic modern change. This is the eating pattern of the future. Believe me. And if restaurants don’t adapt they will die.

June 3, 2005