At a dinner recently Jewel Wine On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, my table was filled with raw scallops on crisp kale leaves, a grilled lobster-chanterellus sandwich, mackerel slices on warm toast, and mashed and fried lion’s mane schnitzel. The small plates added up to a good meal – and the kind of hefty bill I’d expect from a certain not-so-drink-focused restaurant: A delicious corn ice cream and a bottle of Savagnin were included. I got close to $400.

But a 20-something wearing a Waffle House hoodie could just as easily leave the restaurant with a $28 bill. By chef and owner Flynn McGarryGem Wine is an “intermediate restaurant” that bows to the current mood for choose-your-own adventure dining. “Guests have the option not to treat us as a restaurant,” he says.

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Not so long ago, at the same address, McGarry’s was serving 12-course tasting menus priced at $155 before temporarily closing the Gem and converting it into its current wine bar version. Soon, Bar Contra occupies real estate that once housed counterJeremiah Stone and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra have forgone their $180 tasting menu in favor of Dave Arnold’s stuffed chicken wings and modernist cocktails.

Laurel, a tasting menu restaurant in Philadelphia, is now a wine bar BayWhile Chicago’s Esmé is developing an easier restaurant-within-a-restaurant, Bar Esme. In New Orleans, the renovation of Emeril’s comes with a sister wine bar. When we return to New York, Angie Mar Le B, formerly known as Les Trois Chevaux, has eliminated the dress code and added burgers to the bar menu. This doesn’t mean fine dining is dead; it just shows his looser, more relaxed side.

Check out the booking platform Resy and you can probably make a same-day reservation at Eleven Madison Park, where Daniel Humm recently vacated two private dining rooms. Clementine Bar. Three years after the iconic restaurant went vegan, the EMP team says their guests are younger and more diverse, and they sense the demand to create a more accessible experience; That’s why there are new art-filled areas designed for cocktails and snacks like fried tofu dogs, and a tasting counter offering a 90-minute quick set menu and drink pairings.

Chefs say there’s so much going on in the ether of the restaurant that has led us to this moment, and the huge popularity of appetite-suppressing weight-loss pills like Ozempic is hardly a factor. An overdue recalibration of what luxury versus excess is; After all, omakase counters are improving. But it became clear to many in the restaurant business that the tasting menu landscape was oversaturated. Diners grew tired of eating for hours, sometimes until they almost fell ill.

Chefs also had to take a break from their meticulous work. Stone and von Hauske Valtierra opened Contra in 2013 with a $55 set menu served on Ikea plates and paired with natural wines. But the raves attracted customers accustomed to fine china and flashy service, so Contra improved its serving equipment, added courses and gradually raised the price to $180. “Everyone who worked for me said Contra was the most satisfying (but) difficult job,” Stone says. “Because it was non-stop. It takes a lot out of you.”

The pressure didn’t ease until the pandemic shuttered the restaurant, but it was the turmoil that drove Stone to take reputational risks. Contra can either get fancier and stay at the center of his universe, or he can fall back on something simpler that will allow him and von Hauske Valtierra to grow their business sustainably. They chose the latter.

Demographic changes are also a factor. Many loyal tasting menu customers have moved out of city centers during lockdown, and some of those replacing them do not appear to have the same spending power. “People want to experience things they can’t afford; they want cheap (but) glamor,” says the chef Jenner TomaskaAfter a successful restaurant week, he introduced Bar Esmé’s $68 three-course menu. This is a steal compared to the $295 tasting menu for two stars at Esmé.

Young chef EJ Lagasse reminded me that next to many fine restaurants there are bars with drinks and snacks ready: Le Bernardin’s Aldo SohmSaga’s Crown ShyThe bar at EMP. That’s one reason why he and his father, Emeril, installed a wine bar next to the renovated 12-table dining room at Emeril’s. EJ also didn’t want to produce a huge volume of tasting menus and says the wine bar fits the rhythms of New Orleans drinking culture. “You can have an incredible ’96 Guigal La Turque with paté en croûte and an order of barbecue shrimp,” he says. “This is a spur-of-the-moment event. You didn’t need to make a reservation months in advance to enjoy the atmosphere, the service, the wine cellar and the produce from the kitchen that prepared this special tasting menu.”

In today’s culinary landscape, these artsy but casual haunts are helping to fund serious fine dining while building a following of younger guests who haven’t yet purchased the tasting menus. Lagasse, 21, and McGarry, 25, remain committed to the multi-course, highly orchestrated format. “Now is a great time to be working on a fine dining restaurant,” insists McGarry, who is planning a new restaurant for 2025. “What I’m working on now is: How is it possible for EMP to become the fine dining restaurant it was 15 years ago? How do we not get stuck in the same place?”

McGarry sees his work at Gem Wine as market research. And he finds that people love the concept; The place is full every night. Now all he has to do is turn what he’s learned from serving men in tank tops more comfortably into the “next big thing.”

A few years ago I sat in a seedy Michelin star restaurant. Despite the clever and entertaining cooking, everyone around me ate in respectful silence. Last night at Gem Wine I could barely hear my husband over the noise. I haven’t had dinner at Eleven Madison Park since going vegan, but although it’s not a full meal, I’ll be sipping a Clemente martini with a tofu dog soon, even if it’s not a full meal. The next big thing in fine dining isn’t exactly a restaurant, it’s more than a bar, and it’s exactly what we need right now.

Caroline Hatchett is a James Beard Award-nominated author and culture writer living in New York.

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