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A bit of a mouthful

How much fun is fun-sized food?

There are many great questions in life that we’d like to get answers to. Why are we here? Is there a god? If there is a god, why does he let James Blunt carry on tormenting us? But frankly, we’re never going to get anywhere with them, so we decided to wrestle with a far greater issue instead: why on earth are fun-sized foodstuffs like mini Mars bars meant to be more fun?

To find out, we went to top restaurant The Cookbook Café, whose chefs are kings of the mini-food cocktail party menu. The premise is simple: we nip into their kitchen and they knock us up a load of tiny versions of popular dishes Then we do a taste test and try to figure out if they’re more fun than regular-sized versions. 

‘When I first heard about what you were trying to do I thought, “Wow, this is actually the kind of food I think of as having a great, great future,” enthuses executive chef Michel Gehrig. Okay, but is it more fun? ‘Yeah, absolutely. The idea is to have an intense concentration of flavours in every miniature mouthful. You’re most likely only going to have one bite, so that needs to really make an impact, and if you’re a serious chef, that’s exactly the kind of challenge you’re looking for.’ Clearly there’s some serious pride that comes before a small.

First up, we get a mini burger. ‘THAT,’ explains sous-chef Kevin Levett ‘is a normal sized portion.’ There’s a thud as he slaps 600g of minced beef onto the kitchen work surface. ‘Here’s your portion,’ he says sliding a tuppence-sized patty and a thimbleful of chips towards us. We chow down. It’s like a burger, but smaller. It’s good, but it’s less satisfying. We can’t see real meat-hungry burger fans loving this. ‘Actually, we had an American group come in a couple of days ago, we made some mini burgers for them, and they loved it,’ counters Michel. But don’t Americans love massive portions? ‘Absolutely, but what they also love is to go to a cocktail party and to eat lots of different things. We do mini shepherd’s pies too. Same principle, same concept, same thing.’

Cue the mini shepherd’s pie. All of about five centimetres across, it sits next to a cut of rabbit, complete with tiny ribs. We dig in, and it’s perfect. Paris Hilton-esque mash (rich and thick, since you asked) hides a tangy, sweet gravy. What’s in this? ‘Rabbit,’ Kevin explains. We turn to our right, and realise we’re being eyeballed by the skinned carcass of a bunny. Erm, next dish please.

Over comes the smallest frying pan we’ve ever seen. Inside there’s a fried quail’s egg, a cherry tomato, a mini sausage and a tiny hash brown, and it turns out to be the most flavour-packed fry-up we’ve ever had. It’s followed by a teeny baby gem lettuce and buffalo mozzarella salad, at all of about two inches across. ‘It’s a supermodel’s main course, that one,’ Kevin chuckles. This is clearly a case of the old (ahem) small-or-nothing approach to food. So you agree that it’s not size that matters, but what you do with it? ‘If you’re talking about what you do after dinner, then yeah,’ Kevin laughs. ‘Actually, yes on both counts.’

Next up is a mini-portion of fish and chips, complete with tiny paper cone, which is definitely more fun. Not least because it doesn’t leave us wanting to keel over afterwards like a regular grease-soaked fish supper.  In fact, much to our surprise, tucking into Corgi-sized versions of classics did turn out to be more fun than their heftier counterparts.  But we still haven’t tackled the real question – the biggest issue facing modern society: fun-sized Mars bars – are they more fun? ‘I don’t eat Mars bars,’ rebuffs Kevin. Oh well, looks like there are some questions that’ll never be answered.

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