New York restaurants roll out dinners designed for two

These days, New York restaurant menus often overflow with a miscellany of small plates and snacks you’re supposed to share. But how do you divvy up four raw scallops that arrive in a cup the size of an infant’s palm, or pinches of sea urchin on Lilliputian rafts of toast?

For anyone who finds this frustrating, behold the growing popularity of the dish for two, an entree bonanza you can share without resorting to a butter-knife duel.

At the Elm, the chef Paul Liebrandt’s new restaurant in the King & Grove hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there’s a section of the menu reserved for shared dishes like chicken Kiev and pork belly, delectable dioramas at the bottom of deep, wide cocottes.

“When you put something down on the table, and it’s for two people, you watch people draw in close,” Mr. Liebrandt said.

As for the chicken parmigiana at Quality Italian in Midtown, what brings people together is the over-the-top opera of the thing. So expansive that it looks as if it could serve as the landing pad for a remote-control helicopter, this re-engineered Italian-American staple comes flat, round and stretched out to the rim of an actual pizza platter. (Instead of the customary cutlet, the chicken inside the crust is white and dark meat ground together with Italian spices like a meatball, so that it can be pressed into shape before cooking.)

For two? It could feed a family of six. Then there’s the Quality Italian veal shank, with its Richard Serra-esque swell of bone. “It’s got that kind of primordial feel to it,” said Michael Stillman, the president of Fourth Wall, the restaurant company that owns Quality Italian and that prides itself on its penchant for showmanship.

The resurgence of dishes for two has become so widespread in New York that it feels as if a cabal of restaurateurs instigated the whole thing by sending out a secret memo. Among the early adopters were the NoMad, with its by-now-beatified roast chicken; Má Pêche, where a pork chop built for two has gradually been joined by tandem companions like a whole porgy and a fried chicken; and Red Rooster, whose oceanic Harlem chowder could be used to teach a classroom full of hungry children about the diversity of sea life.

There’s more. These days you’ll find dishes for two at Lafayette (rotisserie chicken), Le Bernardin (red snapper baked in an herbal salt crust), Uncle Boons (a Thai-style grilled seafood plate), and DBGB Kitchen & Bar (baked Alaska, with flaming kirsch and everything). Sorella has a block of lasagna for two, enriched with layers of braised rabbit and caramelized fennel and luxurious béchamel, that might weigh more than the September issue of Vogue. Kingside, the chef Marc Murphy’s soon-to-open restaurant in the Viceroy hotel, will devote a chunk of the menu to eat-with-four-hands items like lamb shank.

At the Fourth, near Union Square, the chef Marco Moreira rolls out a different couple-targeted specialty from night to night: a rabbit porchetta on Mondays, lobster fra diavolo on Wednesdays, roasted Long Island duck on Thursdays. “It feels very homey,” he said. “It’s like going to your favorite uncle or grandmother, and they put this feast in front of you.”

But what happens when you want that homey feast but your dining partner does not? If you’re on a first date, is it too soon to conquer a Jurassic pork chop together? Can two business colleagues share Sorella’s megalith of lasagna without slipping into the zone of ridiculousness, or even inappropriateness? (That “might feel a little uncomfortable,” admitted Molly Nickerson, Sorella’s executive chef.)

If small plates raise a series of questions about etiquette (is it polite to wait until everyone else has snapped up a deep-fried artichoke heart before you charge in for more?), dishes for two come with their own complicated protocols.

All of this can stir up another problem: Doesn’t ordering a big dish mean that you won’t have room for anything else? Or does it just encourage you to surrender to everything, calories and expense be damned? A few snacks, a few appetizers, chicken parm as vast as the wheel of a tricycle: why stop there?

Dishes for two have a classic lineage, after all. And New York steakhouses have always served double-barreled (and triple-priced) porterhouses and rib-eyes that look hulking enough to topple a table.

For a chef, the execution of what’s known as a “large format” dish allows a kitchen to show off skills that can sometimes be hemmed in by the limitations of a standard main course. With a big slab of meat on the bone, Mr. Moreira said, “You can be more aggressive on the fire, so you’ll get better caramelization on the outside, and yet the inside’s going to be juicy.”

And should negotiations with your date fail, you can always order that plank of lasagna just for yourself.

“I’ve seen people eat the whole thing,” Ms. Nickerson said. “I’m like: ‘Wow. You are a champion.’ ”