Size matters

The local restaurant community starts out the new year on familiar ground – setting a national trend. One of the leading stories in food media in 2016 was … small. Award-winning restaurants being opened by award-winning chefs were distinguished by their diminutive size. Where dining destinations in the past were large-capacity palaces, this new style of eatery, while no less elegantly appointed, may be more appropriately compared to a jewel box. Places that seat as few as a dozen diners, with others that top out at a capacity of 24 patrons, are opening their doors and their waiting lists.

It is not a matter of downsizing. Nationwide, a number of well-known chefs and restaurateurs are making their marks, and in many cases beginning new chapters in their careers, by establishing entirely new ventures that are, by design, small.

Chefs and restaurateurs in Rhode Island are on the leading edge of the movement, and in fact have been pioneers in it. Going back nearly a decade, Johanne Killeen and the late George Germon established a small restaurant on Washington Street in the fall of 2008 called, appropriately enough, Tini. It had a seating capacity of 19. While the concept yielded in a fairly short time to another groundbreaking restaurant, Ben Sukle’s birch, the reverberations were heard across the country. At around the same time in the early 2000s, reality TV show “Top Chef Masters” contestant Naomi Pomeroy, who frequently appears on my radio show, opened her Portland, Ore., restaurant Beast with 24 seats. In the beginning, it was a matter of survival by being frugal. Pomeroy said in an interview, “We would wash the dishes while we were doing service, and the servers had to help while they were trying to pour wine. It was pretty crazy.”

In Boston, chef-restaurateur Tiffani Faison is about to adopt the “small-is-quirky-is-groundbreaking” business model. Any day now, she is expected to open the doors of her third concept – located in the shadow of Fenway Park on Boylston Street – called Fool’s Errand. What is known about Fool’s Errand is that it will be a ticketed reservation system for only 12 seats.

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The ticket idea is not new. High-concept chef Grant Achatz in Chicago has been doing some experiments in that arena off and on for the last year or so. Faison is a savvy businessperson. She has already let it be known that the “ticket” may be transferable to her other concepts.

In Providence, good things continue to come in small packages, with several of the most successful new restaurants a “hot ticket,” by reputation anyway. Spots such as north, north bakery, birch’s sibling national spotlight-attracting Oberlin, Red Fin Crudo and several others with seating capacities of no more than 30.

Why are we so out in front in this particular category? Overthinking the concept is not necessary here. It may be no more complicated than the fact that after all, we are the biggest little state. Small is what we do here. •

Bruce Newbury’s Dining Out radio show is heard on 1540 WADK-AM and through the TuneIn mobile app. Email Bruce at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

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