Snack attack

As seductive as they are, snacks have shamelessly overtaken our restaurant menus and morphed into share plates

- MICHAEL HARDEN.

THEY'RE SEDUCTIVE, SNACKS. A LITTLE SNEAKY TOO, THE way they've begun colonising an ever-increasing amount of real estate at the top of restaurant menus. Alluringly dressing what might be considered a semi-shameful culinary kink in fine-dining drag: a potato gem, topped with crème fraîche and caviar, a morsel of fried chicken turned edgy with house-fermented chilli, a tiny crumpet piled with raw tuna or crab meat. You'd be a stronger person than me to resist those salty, sweet, fatty, tangy siren songs.

That snacks are increasingly offered per piece adds to the allure. This is a marked improvement on the small plate conundrum that takes place when starters arrive as a trio on a table of two or four, requiring extra negotiations with your server or your dining companions. It also allows you to pretend you're exercising restraint by ordering just one blinged potato gem, even if said gem might set you back somewhere north of 10 bucks for a single mouthful and will inevitably tempt you into ordering a second. Or a third.