Vol. XXXII · The Plate, the Menu and the Craft Plate 7 of 11tasting menu, dégustation, kaiseki, omakase, courses, portion size, pacing, sequence, timing, intervals, service, total food, satiety, ganttT

A Tasting Menu.

Fifteen courses of 80 g each is 1.2 kg of food — more than most people eat in a day. Tasting menus work only when the portions shrink as the courses multiply.

Tasting menus — the French dégustation, Japanese kaiseki (XXVIII.10) and omakase, the multi-course menus of modern restaurants — present a cook's ideas as a sequence of small dishes. They follow the menu principles (XXXII.6) at a finer grain: a few bites of snacks to open, then lighter courses, building to one or two richer savoury courses, a pre-dessert to cleanse, a dessert, and small sweets. Each portion is a few bites: the whole menu should total roughly what a guest would eat at a normal generous dinner — something like 500–800 g of food — not a series of full plates.

Pacing is the hidden skill. Too fast and the meal feels rushed and guests are still eating one course when the next arrives; too slow and conversation runs dry and the kitchen's rhythm breaks. Kitchens plan the interval between courses (often 8–15 minutes from one to the next), fire each course from the dining room's signal rather than a fixed clock, and keep the longest preparations in the middle where guests linger. A menu of 15 courses at 12-minute intervals takes three hours; the same at 18 takes four and a half — long for any guest. The workshop paces a menu.

Below: a tasting menu of the number of courses, portion size and interval you choose, drawn as a timeline (schedule bench), with its total food, approximate energy and length.

What you will learn
Workshop
Teaching assumptions: each course eaten in about 60 % of its interval, the rest a pause; energy about 1.6 kcal per gram of plated food (a mixed menu). Guidance (teaching, from restaurant practice): total food 500–800 g; total length up to about 3 hours is comfortable.

Small bites, steady rhythm

Fifteen courses of 80 g make 1,200 g of food — far beyond a comfortable dinner; to stay near 700 g, each of fifteen courses can be only about 47 g, a few mouthfuls. Fifteen courses at 12-minute intervals take 3.0 hours; at 18 minutes, 4.5. Tasting menus therefore pair many courses with very small portions and a brisk, steady pace, and often fewer courses than the restaurant could make.

Planning one: list the courses with portion weights and total them; place richer courses in the middle and something refreshing before dessert; give each course one idea rather than five; make sure no two consecutive courses share a dominant ingredient or texture; time the kitchen's firing from the dining room's signal ("table 4 ready for course 6"); and offer a shorter version — many guests prefer it. For a home version, five or six small courses is plenty.

At the stove

Serve a five-course tasting dinner at home with each course a few bites. Weigh the portions and time the intervals.

Kaiseki, the most ancient tasting-menu form still served, grew from the light meal of the Japanese tea ceremony in the sixteenth century: a fixed sequence of small courses, each built around the season and served on dishes chosen for it.

Terms

Tasting menu
Many small courses in a set sequence.
Pacing
The timing between courses.
Pre-dessert
A small refreshing course before dessert.
Omakase
Japanese: "I leave it to you" — the chef chooses.
A tasting menu is many small courses: keep the total to about 500–800 g of food, so portions shrink as courses multiply. Pace at about 8–15 minutes per course, rich courses in the middle, and keep the whole under about three hours.

Sources

  1. A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.