Why I hate shared plates (in London)

Don’t get me wrong, I like sharing food with my friends. It’s nice to pick little things here and there just to try lots of different foods out, and I enjoy the communal experience of sharing a table with people that you love and cherish, chatting about anything from politics to how to take care of pot plants. (They are currently dying on my windowsill.)

My grievance with shared plates in London is that it is far too expensive for what it is, and it’s for tiny little bits of food. It is the ultimate restaurant hack for surviving huge business rates, and the people who lose out are diners.

And that’s not the case everywhere. When I went to Spain and had lots of different shared plates, it was delicious. The chorizo was juicy, the patatas bravas were delicious, and it was a wonderful time. But when I have the same in the UK, I’m dished out tiny plates with just a sliver of fish, or perhaps a little dash of figs, and then I’m plastered with a bill that may require me to remortgage my home.

I understand why. Restaurants in London are suffering at the moment due to the renewed increase in VAT, and that means they have even thinner margins. Shared plates are a great hack because they can get the value out of the food that they do have. But what it does mean is that it just burns customers who probably won’t return again, because it feels as though they have to sell their left kidney to have a kidney bean.