Absurdly Small Restaurants Around the World

What these restaurants lack in size, they make up for in panache.

World's Smallest Restaurants

As the saying goes, good things come in small packages. And that’s deliciously true at the smallest restaurants in the world, where chefs can focus their attention on a small handful of exclusive diners instead of the hungry hordes.

From a futuristic bunker in Shanghai to a nondescript shack in Finland, these utterly unique establishments promise a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Just know that you might have to jump through hoops or wait in long lines to secure one of the very few coveted tables.

15. Talula’s Table — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Maximum number of diners: 20-22

During the day, Talula’s Table is an artisanal marketplace in Kennett Square. At night, it becomes an intimate dining experience and the most difficult reservation in Philly. It not only requires reserving a year in advance, but committing to bringing eight to 12 friends or family members.

Each morning, restaurateur Aimee Olexy answers the phone and takes a single reservation for the entire “farm table” exactly one year from the current date. (There’s also a smaller, invite-only “chef’s table” for four to eight guests that can be booked four months out.)

Seasonal dishes on the eight-course tasting menu have included everything from braised suckling lamb to sea scallop crudo with a pickled pasteurized egg. The cost? A not-so-small $108 a person.

There’s no dress code, and it’s BYOB — although pairings will be suggested in advance.

14. Saint-Germain — New Orleans, Louisiana

Maximum number of diners: 16

The Crescent City is bursting with amazing restaurants, but the new best place to dine in NOLA is one of the smallest. Inside a shotgun-style house in the Bywater, chefs Trey Smith and Blake Aguillard have created their version of a modern French bistro.

Smith and Aguillard wanted to provide French fare such as chicken liver terrine and coulotte steak in an environment that was small but not stuffy, as most French restaurants tend to be in New Orleans. On the third weekend of each month, they even offer a full vegetarian menu.

For those who can’t score one of the dining-room seats, Saint-Germain also has a 50-seat wine bar that operates separately from the bistro. It offers a tasty array of smaller bites, such as raw vegetables served with a side of lip-smacking pepper rouille. Drinks can be enjoyed in a lovely, relatively spacious backyard.

13. Mr. Pollo — San Francisco, California

Maximum number of diners: 15

The wait for a table at this itsy-bitsy Mission District arepa joint often reaches two hours — and for good reason. The menu here is delectable and, compared to almost every other San Fran eatery, super inexpensive.

Mr. Pollo’s $35 five-course tasting menu features such flavorful items as tomato thyme soup, octopus confit with parsnip purée, duck breast with wild watercress and peach sauce, and fried pork belly with beans and radishes. Customers with bigger appetites can order arepas a la carte if the portions from the tasty but tiny pre-fixe menu don’t satisfy.

The best seats are at the bar overlooking the shockingly small kitchen.

12. The Bite House — Nova Scotia, Canada

Maximum number of diners: 12

Inside a quaint, century-old farmhouse on Cape Breton Island, this restaurant is all about the journey of its ingredients, which are foraged, sourced from local farmers or grown in the garden outside.

For three nights a week from May to December, chef Bryan Picard serves a nine-course dinner that frequently changes depending on what he finds. Past dishes have included hot-smoked trout with pickled pumpkin and crispy rye, and a goat dumpling with bacon thyme broth and sunflower shoots.

The Bite House is actually Picard’s house, so the atmosphere is more homey than exclusive, despite the fact that a reservation for an $80 dinner is extremely difficult to lock in. The cozy restaurant is booked up to a year in advance.

11. Sublimotion — Ibiza, Spain

Maximum number of diners: 12

Inside the Hard Rock Hotel Ibiza, a dozen guests can enjoy a gastronomy-meets-fantasy experience at this unusual hotspot. Thanks to trippy visuals projected on the table and walls throughout the 20-course dinner, the dining room doesn’t feel small. Depending on the effects, you may feel like you’re underwater or at a circus.

Under the helm of chef Paco Roncero, a menu of out-of-this-world food, such as deconstructed shrimp scampi and a vegetable garden with edible soil, is married with art, technology and illusionism for a meal whose outlandishness goes way beyond the plate.

It’s also not cheap. Sublimotion’s three-hour dinner odyssey runs about $2,000 a person and must be booked several months in advance. Willy Wonka, eat your heart out.

10. Blanca — Brooklyn, New York

Maximum number of diners: 12

Yes, most restaurants in New York City are small, but Blanca is next-level small. The establishment has been embracing its space constraints since 2012, when chef Carlo Mirarchi brought the after-hours tasting menu he’d been creating for friends at his hip pizzeria Roberta’s to a 12-seat counter in the back.

The swanky white space in Bushwick is populated with leather barstools that act as a front row to Mirachi’s kitchen, where he and his team prepare over 20 Italian-inspired dishes like crispy sweetbreads and cavatappi pasta topped with sea urchin.

A dinner at Blanca costs $198 a person, and reservations are available online beginning 28 days in advance. If that seems too steep or complicated, just go for a stress-free pie at Roberta’s.

9. Ultraviolet — Shanghai, China

Maximum number of diners: 10

One of the most technologically advanced dining rooms in the world is also one of the smallest. This state-of-the-art restaurant utilizes lights, projectors, scent diffusers and a surround-sound system to take diners on a 20-course trip created by chef Paul Pairet.

The innovative visual elements are an integral part of the $900 experience. For example, during one course, a Union Jack flag is projected onto the table while the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” plays and Pairet’s over-the-top rendition of fish and chips is served. Another course turns the room into the scene of an outdoor picnic.

Despite being located in a windowless venue in central Shanghai, Ultraviolet promises a truly awe-inspiring — and exclusive! — experience.

8. Le Comptoir — Los Angeles, California

Maximum number of diners: 10

At first glance, Le Comptoir looks it might be another L.A. coffee shop, but that walnut counter and those 10 stools aren’t for sipping lattes and working on screenplays. It’s actually a beloved restaurant in Koreatown where diners watch chef Gary Menes carefully craft a $90-per-person extravaganza.

The menu is mostly plant based. Menes grows and sources much of the produce, including peas and kale, from a farm near his home in Long Beach. That doesn’t mean Le Comptoir is strictly a vegetarian affair, though; there are meat supplements available for hangry carnivores.

With Cali-meets-French flair, Le Comptoir unleashes such dishes as perfectly roasted squash, eggplant beignets and poached egg served atop bread baked by Menes himself. To score a seat at his counter, a ticket must be purchased in advance.

7. Tsuta — Tokyo, Japan

Maximum number of diners: 9

It’s not uncommon to find smaller-than-small food stalls and sushi bars across Japan’s bustling metropolis, but this 9-seat ramen bar serving Michelin-starred noodles is definitely the most coveted.

To secure one of the day’s 70 spots, there’s a complex reservation system that involves queuing up before the restaurant opens to nab a colored ticket for dining during a specific time frame. As with most ramen joints, patrons aren’t here for the interior decor. It’s all about the ramen.

There are several options—broth, noodles, toppings—but Tsuta’s most well regarded ramen is an umami-packed option made with black truffle. The best part? A bowl goes for about $15.

Just be prepared to wait in line. A really long line. (There are also a couple larger outposts in Singapore.)

6. Silver Bough — Montecito, California

Maximum number of diners: 8

This intimate restaurant’s name and backstory is rooted in myth. According to Celtic lore, a place believed to offer a joyous bacchanal fit for kings and queens could be accessed by mere mortals through touching a magical silver branch, otherwise known as a “bough.”

After diners are instructed to pluck their first bites from a silver tree in the center of the dining room, a red curtain theatrically opens to reveal chef Phillip Frankland Lee and his team standing in front of a marble counter overlooking the kitchen in the back of the Montecito Inn.

Lee, who competed on the 13th season of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” then goes on to serve complicated dishes like live spiny lobster tartare and a duck liver tartlette topped with a sherry-verjus reduction.

A ticket to enjoy this decadent experience costs $550 and includes wine pairings.

5. é — Las Vegas, Nevada

Maximum number of diners: 8

Sin City boasts some of the world’s largest dining venues, but chef Jose Andres proudly claims Vegas’ smallest restaurant. Tucked behind his tapas utopia Jaleo inside The Cosmopolitan, é defies Vegas’ “bigger is better” ethos to tremendous effect.

Andres and his team serve up a $195 tasting menu (excluding wine pairings) featuring 21 courses of avant-garde Spanish dishes like foie gras empanadas made with cotton candy, all served in a space that’s elegantly lined with old library-card drawers.

In Washington, D.C., Andres operates a similar 10-seat restaurant cheekily called minibar.

4. Naoe — Miami, Florida

Maximum number of diners: 8

For over a decade, chef Kevin Cory has been serving flawlessly crafted sushi at this minimalist jewel box of a restaurant. While there are three tables, the best seats in the house are the Japanese cyprus chairs located at the bar, from which diners can watch Cory prepare mouthwatering nigri and pummel him with questions about sea urchin.

A dinner at Naoe costs $220 and is completely an omakase experience, meaning Cory meticulously sets the menu, so don’t expect any sort of accommodations or substitutions for allergies or special diets. Bold selections include kinmedai golden eye snapper and karasumi mullet roe.

3. Holzknechthütte — Patergassen, Austria

Maximum number of diners: 4

The charming Alpine village of Almdorf Seinerzeit is home to a restaurant with a single table. Located in a former lumberjack hut in the Nock Mountains, the itty-bitty Holzknechthütte can accommodate two to four diners at a time.

The chef prepares a Carinthian feast over an open fire located on the other side of the lone dining table, which overlooks a breathtaking valley 4,500 feet below. Dishes range from roast pork to freshly caught lake trout. For dessert? Austrian pancakes, of course.

After the meal, diners usually stay at one of the luxury chalets on site, many of which sport their own private sauna and hot tub.

2. Solo Per Due — Vacone, Italy

Maximum number of diners: 2

What could be more romantic than dining in a Roman villa once owned by a poet? This restaurant, which appropriately boasts a name that literally translates to “just for two,” welcomes a pair of diners each night for an extravagant feast priced at $330 a person.

The lavish meal is served on the ground floor of the 19th century abode amidst art, statues and fresh flowers pre-selected by patrons. For the ultimate unobtrusive touch, diners are presented with a silver bell to ring if they need anything.

Over the past three decades of operation, Solo per Due has hosted more than 4,500 marriage proposals. As a bonus, the restaurant can arrange for diners to spend the night on the property if they want to keep that loving feeling going after dessert.

1. Kuappi — Iisalmi, Finland

Maximum number of diners: 2

No, that’s not a sea shack. This wooden yellow cabin is actually the world’s smallest restaurant by size, according to Guinness World Records. The 86-square-foot space has enough room for one table, a small kitchen, a bathroom and a terrace.

Kuappi, which translates to “the closet,” serves traditional Finnish fare like snails, salmon soup and “hunter’s bread,” fried and topped with a savory mushroom sauce. Because the restaurant is so small, the food is actually cooked over at the neighboring Olutmestari eatery.

Despite the Lilliputian furnishings, the quirky Kuappi actually still has a full bar. However, it’s comically stocked with minibar-sized bottles of booze.