Michelin-starred restaurants take à la carte off the menu

A stiff, white à la carte menu used to signify a classic restaurant, one with a broad range of dishes to satisfy all tastes.

But just over a century since Auguste Escoffier introduced London to the pleasures of à la carte dining, at Pall Mall’s Carlton Hotel, some of Britain’s leading restaurants are limiting the freedom of their guests to choose their dinner.

Stéphane Borie, a French chef at The Checkers, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Montgomery, Wales, has abandoned his à la carte menu in favour of set menus, which he claimed would be less wasteful.

“It is difficult to evaluate, but we’re hoping to halve our food waste; with à la carte we never wanted to run out of anything, so we’d cook a little a bit of everything. [This way] we’re choosing for people what they’re going to have, so we control the waste.”

Earlier this month another esteemed French chef, Claude Bosi of two-Michelin starred restaurant Hibiscus, also decided to jettison choice in his evening service, offering instead two different tasting menus, both at £135, one classic and the other a “surprise”.

Rebecca Burr, editor of the Michelin guide in the UK, said the decline of à la carte dining was “something we have witnessed over the last few years”.

She added that diners who splash out on an expensive meal often prefer the tasting menu, seeing their meals as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“A lot of the chefs prefer to work in that way [only offering tasting menus], but we’d hope they’d change that menu on a regular basis. People do want a little bit of choice at the top level,” she said.

In Paris, the avant-garde restaurant Septime only offers a “carte blanche” menu in the evenings, leaving the five-course meal entirely in the hands of chef Bertrand Grébaut. Le Chateaubriand, another example of Paris’s “bistronomique” movement, similarly sticks to a “menu unique” at €70, for which diners queue hours ahead.

A “one price fits all” approach even includes the tip at New York’s highly regarded Eleven Madison Park — its $295 seasonal tasting menu, the only one on offer, includes 10-15 courses, drinks and “gratuities are neither expected nor accepted”.

As landlords continue to raise rents, the pressure has grown for restaurateurs to improve their margins. In the kitchen, this translates to reducing the amount of food discarded at the end of service.

Cheaper fixed menus at lunch service are also being used by top restaurants to fill tables through booking sites such as Bookatable, recently acquired by Michelin. Nobu, for example, offers a bento box with glass of prosecco for £38, while Fera at Claridge’s has three courses and glass of champagne for £39.

At Hedone in Chiswick, west London, Swedish head chef Mikael Jonsson has taken an even more extreme tack: “We have no menus, we have two spending levels. Essentially, people tell us how much they want to spend [£85 or £125] and give us restrictions that they don’t like this or that, and we design the menu.”

Although arguably more labour-intensive for the restaurant, Mr Jonsson insists it is a better system: “Why I’m doing this is I want to make sure everything I have in my fridges is fantastic quality. If you have a printed menu, inevitably as a chef you will have to serve stuff you’re unhappy with, or it will go in the bin.

“Restaurants will be forced to go away from à la carte if they want to maintain quality. A lot of people are happy to just sit down and eat.”

(Financial Times)