This New Restaurant Pattern within the U.S. Makes Eating Out Really feel Like a Dinner Occasion

I would as nicely have been at a buddy’s place. Seated at a slatted wood desk surrounded by cookbook-lined cabinets, comfortable seating, and cheeky artwork (is that…framed underwear?), I nearly forgot that I used to be truly paying to dine in a former beauty-supply warehouse in Atlanta. Chef and ceramist Zach Meloy hosts his weekly supper membership, Dust Church, for a choose bunch — by no means greater than 16 individuals.

The night I attended, husband in tow, there have been 4 different {couples} on the desk. As at any feast the place you won’t know everybody, we made well mannered small discuss at first, smiling over the crisp-tender split-pea-falafel canapés. By the top of the night, nonetheless, we have been all laughing like previous pals.

That’s by design: Meloy launched Dust Church in 2023 out of a need to interrupt away from the standard turnover-driven mannequin of hospitality. “For me, the true purpose is to get individuals to simply sit down and be with different individuals,” he explains.

It’s an idea that’s taking off throughout the nation, as small-scale eating places — many with 20 or fewer seats — put as a lot emphasis on the communal power as on the meals. 

In Cashiers, North Carolina, chef Scott Alderson opened Native Prime Provisions in a shopping mall, proper between a carpet-cleaning firm and a hair salon. After 25 years as a non-public chef and restaurant marketing consultant, he and his spouse, Tania Duncombe, returned to this mountain resort city, the place he cooked early in his profession. Alderson didn’t need the stress of a full-service restaurant — however he did wish to cook dinner for friends.

So, he arrange an eight-person counter inside his seafood market-slash-butcher store, and now serves lunch 5 days per week. The ever-changing menu would possibly embody nigiri of ahi from Honolulu or pork-belly sliders made with meat from Snake River Farms in Idaho. Dishes are introduced on handmade pottery; jazz tunes set a mellow atmosphere.

“There’s no chrome steel on this place,” Alderson says, admiringly. “That is like my lounge.”

Additionally residential in really feel is One White Avenue, in New York Metropolis, which is about in a TriBeCa city home that when belonged to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (The couple by no means truly lived there, however they did use it to declare, in 1973, the formation of the “nation” of Nutopia.) The three-story area accommodates 18 or fewer on every flooring, with a talk-to-your-neighbors vibe, chef Austin Johnson says. “The music’s loud, it’s enjoyable, and it’s not pretentious,” he explains. The seasonally pushed à la carte and tasting menus spotlight produce from Johnson’s Hudson Valley farm, Rigor Hill. Dishes would possibly embody seared scallops with spring greens and hakurei turnips or Lengthy Island fluke crudo with snow peas and carrots.

Portland’s L’Orange is a wine-forward restaurant that seats 28, cut up throughout three distinct rooms, an association that helps amp up the coziness of every. “It principally feels such as you’re getting into someone’s residence,” says chef Joel Shares, whose cooking leans Mediterranean, with dishes like cold-smoked sturgeon, sunchokes, and white beans dressed with lovage butter. “We sort of lean in to that house-party vibe. It’s simply that the meals and wine may be fancier than what you’d be doing at your individual place.”

Up the coast in Seattle, chef Evan Leichtling and associate Meghna Prakash opened their 12-seat restaurant Off Alley in, nicely, an alley. The venue, which is simply over six ft large, places a give attention to pure wines and whole-animal cooking — and it will get rowdy, with servers shouting out orders, punk rock pumping over the audio system, and friends sitting on barstools towards the wall.

The vibe is admittedly “rock and roll,” Prakash says. “However that enables us to truly create a more in-depth reference to the friends. I don’t know if that will be doable in a a lot greater setting.”

A model of this story first appeared within the September 2024 challenge of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “Small Bites.”