‘The names were alluring, the prices hysterical’ – Grace Dent’s review of the year in restaurants

In a year of baffling food halls, aloof ‘kitchen spaces’ and high-end multi-course snacking, there were a few gems worth a detour

In 2019, I spent a lot of time waiting for a buzzer, in vast, open spaces and sometimes next to carefully commissioned graffiti, where a bowl of curried cabbage or an egg sarnie plus a bottle of pop costs £12 – sorry, that’s a yoga fire vegan curry or an egg sando. The names are alluring, the prices hysterical: welcome to the world of the food hall.

An industry bigwig recently told me that the demise of actual restaurants will not be down to Brexit, but to the Generation Z attitude that pledging loyalty to a particular place that serves a three-course, sit-down menu is a quaint, vintage notion. Newness is all. Creating fresh memories, and social media content, around eating is now crucial to our self-worth, apparently. “Why would you open a restaurant if you could open a bubble waffle stand that dished out amazing-looking cheap carbs at nine quid a throw? And when your clientele have all taken a photo of that, you can just start making something else.”