Neil Irwin rails against the rise of restaurants that only serve small plates:
With a conventional entrée, the chef enters into an implicit agreement with the customer. You, Mr. or Ms. Customer, will order an entrée. I, the chef, will provide you with a properly sized portion of food for an adult human. It will be reasonably balanced nutritionally, with a mix of protein, starch and vegetables. It will be appropriately seasoned so that you might eat the whole thing. And the dish will arrive at the same time as your dining companions’ dinners. Small-plates restaurants take each of those obligations and put them on the shoulders of the diner!
Yglesias fires back:
[T]he case for small plates seems obvious to me: You get to try more stuff. And because you get to try more stuff you get to be more venturesome in your eating. If you’re going to order and eat just one thing then you have to be conservative in what you order; you have to be sure you’ll like it. If you’re sharing a series of small plates with friends, then you have the opportunity to sample things that you’re not sure you’ll like.
Cowen and Ezra follow-up by comparing small plates to TV packages.
The Dish 