Reminds me of this one restaurant in Paris I visited a few years back. We were kinda off the main drag and see this place with a long line way out the door so we decide to walk over and check it out. Saw a tasty looking steak being served and the line seemed to be moving pretty quickly so we decided to wait it out. We quickly realized that no one there spoke any English, and we basically spoke no French. But we were determined nonetheless to see what it was all about.
So we get to the front of the line and the hostess seats us. The waitress walks up to us and quickly realized we don't know any French. So in broken English she asks "rare or well done?". After getting all of our preferences she quickly comes back with wine and steaks with a side of this delicious green sauce.
We were all throughly impressed by the steak/sauce and quickness of service. My dad made a joke that the only thing that could make this better would be another round of steak. And low and behold a second round appears and we all laugh at the irony. All in all a great expirence, though I still don't know what that place was called nor what that sauce was, but it sure was tasty and a unique & fun expirence.
Single menu item steak frites restaurants are available in NYC and London and apparently Mexico City - https://relaisdevenise.com/ They import the secret sauce from France.
These restaurants also make it easy to split the bill as everybody has the same thing!
I just love restaurants that serve one or very few items even if they're small bodegas or a street cart. Being presented with a 12 page menu is off putting, and knowing a single place simply cannot serve 200 types of quality food (ingredients, cooking methods, etc.) is a significant part of that.
With a half a page menu I simply know the cook/chef specialized in that, and the ingredients have a better chance of being fresh and higher quality. One great sauce is 10 times better than a full menu of random choices.
Speaking of small restaurant: A few years ago I was visiting Vienna with my parents, where we strolled around the back alleys. There we found a small bakery[1] and across from that a small "Kaffeehaus" [2]. There we were able to literally buy some freshly baked bread/pastries from the bakery, walk 20m or so over and have breakfast with what we bought over there.
That is something you can barely ever find anywhere. It is also one of the reasons I try to avoid famous places and instead search out to the hidden parts of the city.
> I just love restaurants that serve one or very few items even if they're small bodegas or a street cart.
What's funny is NYC street carts, where the entire surface of the cart is covered in "menu," including hot dogs, sandwiches, burgers, gyros, salads, Philly cheese-steaks, literally anything you can imagine.
But they all _actually_ have only 3 menu items: Chicken over Rice, Lamb over Rice, and Falafel over Rice.
Huh, as a European I wonder what other things we take for granted that is simply uncommon in other parts of the world. It’s very easy to be “home blind”
One of my favorite dining experiences when travelling around Spain was in this small coastal town, going into a restarant and asking on the off chance if they had a menu in English, which they didnt and then just set out to order me a complete 7 course dinner of pheonominal food.
Before this I didn't like salmon sashimi, and one of the dishes was like beetroot cured (i think?) salmon tartare and it was delishish and finally put me onto sashimi
So we get to the front of the line and the hostess seats us. The waitress walks up to us and quickly realized we don't know any French. So in broken English she asks "rare or well done?". After getting all of our preferences she quickly comes back with wine and steaks with a side of this delicious green sauce.
We were all throughly impressed by the steak/sauce and quickness of service. My dad made a joke that the only thing that could make this better would be another round of steak. And low and behold a second round appears and we all laugh at the irony. All in all a great expirence, though I still don't know what that place was called nor what that sauce was, but it sure was tasty and a unique & fun expirence.