Plates Of Pittance

After almost two years of restaurant reviewing, I committed the cardinal sin of high-class dining. It happened on a recent Saturday night at Falai, a new and well-received Italian restaurant on Clinton Street. "How is everything?" was the rhetorical question posed by our waitress minutes after fresh entrées had been placed on the table.

I had ordered the langoustines with langoustine consommé. What appeared on my plate were three crustaceans nestled side by side with a sparse garnish of paper-thin zucchini slices, a pair of shrunken tomatoes and a few ounces of broth in a shapely white cup. After I had removed the antennaed armor of my blushing sea creatures, what remained were three bites of shrimp. Six, if you have a particularly small mouth.

When I sampled the live shrimp at Jewel Bako a year ago, the sushi chef gave me personal instructions on how to suck whatever goodness was to be had from the exoskeletal remains. Back on this night, I pulled over a waiter to ask if I should do the same. Surely, my $24 entree did not merely consist of three nibs of meat. There must be some Cracker Jack prize waiting inside the crustaceal cavity?

"Am I supposed to suck on these?" I asked, pointing to the tangle of faces and feelers.

"Some people do," he said. "But there's really nothing in there."

A notoriously slow eater, I finished my meal in a record five minutes. My answer to the waitress? I looked her squarely in the eye and said, "This meal was not a good value."

For the expression on her face, I may as well have slapped her. "Not a good value?" she demurred, and walked away. That was the beginning and the end of that conversation. I was left with the distinct feeling that I had committed some kind of dining faux pas, trespassed on an unspoken rule that, in a classy establishment, demanding a satisfying portion is déclassé.

To add insult to injury, while browsing through W magazine a week later, I came across a biting morsel in the column of "Countess Louise J. Esterhazy" (nom de plume of John Fairchild). She systematically listed her gripes with New York City's "bigness," and this one hit home: "Portions in Restaurants: There are diners in certain chic restaurants who literally count the numbers of shrimp they receive in a starter, or complain that the portions are too small. Why don't they just go to Hooters?"

We all know that French women don't get fat (or go to Hooters). At this rate, Gotham's women won't either. In a country where unnaturally large servings are partially to blame for the obesity epidemic, flinching at small portions has acquired a cultural stigma. In high-end eateries, diners are expected to value the chef's artistry over quantity, sensation over satisfaction. Surely, if the residents of Washington Heights-an area of Manhattan statistically hard-hit by obesity-were eating at chic downtown restaurants every night, they, too, could possess the lithe physiques French women have achieved through lifetimes of moderation?

Wondering if I was in the wrong, I did some portion-size research. The American Cancer Society's recommendation for a meat or fish serving is three ounces. At Hooters, the buffalo shrimp appetizers come with 10 or 20 pieces, weighing in at roughly four and eight ounces, respectively. The comparatively high-end Union Square Hospitality Group, which includes Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park (fine dining by any standards), operates on a similar scale, using seven to eight ounces of meat or fish in their entrees. But at Falai, according to the owner's estimate the meat of each langoustine weighs one ounce before it's cooked.

That Saturday, I happened to know the diner at the next table, and we got to talking about our meals. He is on staff at the French Culinary Institute, his companion a chef at Jean Georges who had just returned from a tour of Italy. "I'm really impressed," she gushed over a half-eaten plate of pork loin. "Everything has been great." When I shared with them the misfire of my entrée, they regarded me with silent sympathy. Maybe I should have ordered the pork. Or maybe I just should have gone to Hooters.