Please, No More Sharing Plates

While out for dinner last month, Joe and Jill Biden ordered the exact same main course—and I have a sneaking suspicion that I might be one of the few people in the food industry who thinks it’s actually pretty damn cute. The first couple of the United States popped into The Red Hen, a contemporary Italian-American joint, a 10-minute drive from his office—that office, of course, being the White House—on February 18. The Red Hen’s extremely decent-looking, mid-priced menu offers classics with a non-threatening twist; think saucy squid ink linguini and a chicory salad that goes heavy on the gorgonzola. So far, so classic date night. 

On their visit to this D.C. dining establishment, Potus and Flotus ordered two glasses of Barbera, grilled bread with cultured butter, the aforementioned chicory salad (wise choice), and, for their entree, two portions of rigatoni with sausage. One for Joe, one for Jill. When news of the order broke via a tweet from Washingtonian food editor Jessica Sidman, their matchy-matchy move was lambasted for being unimaginative, embarrassing, and the very opposite of romantic. Surely, it’s better to order two different dishes so you can try them both, the haters claimed. But, despite the social media outcry, I’m here to throw the full weight of my support behind these two traditional tasters. 

Sharing is bad. There, I said it! Over the past decade, it’s almost become the industry standard for restaurants to suggest ordering “five to seven dishes” from a same-y line-up of starter-sized options. (Whipped cod’s roe! some kind of pulled meat croquettes! burrata drizzled with an unintelligible green oil!) Which is not to say that any of these offerings aren’t tasty, but to highlight the fact that they deliver just a tiny taste of greatness, while never really letting anyone go all-in and shamelessly scoff whatever sits in front of them. They deny us the pure and greedy pleasure of a big plate of food for one, a dish that you can behave appallingly to—by over-salting, pushing about messily with your fork, and eating at your own leisurely pace—and offending nobody, apart from maybe the chef, in the process. 

The rigatoni Jill and Joe ordered is apparently The Red Hen’s specialty. This isn’t just any sausage ragu, this is one that, under a recent Instagram post, a local branded the “best dish in D.C.” It looks it too, dusted with a heavy blanket of grated parmesan. If I heard something was the best dish in town, I’d be more than happy for my partner to order it as well—in fact, I’d encourage it. Consider the alternative: namely, facing the ignominy of ordering something not quite as divine and having to look at your date chowing down in raptures, as you push your own less-than-spectacular pasta around the plate, contemplating revenge by somehow spiking their tiramisu with a bottle of balsamic. The whole scenario is unthinkable. 

At 80 and 71 years of age respectively, Joe and Jill are old enough to know their own minds—and their own stomachs, for that matter. Not for them the totalitarianism of “picky bits,” where it’ll only take mere mouthfuls of food for those tiny plates to become empty ones, following a pass-agg, “no you have the last bit” exchange. Instead, this couple orders what they want—which just so happens to be the very same thing—and get to share in the satisfaction that neither one of them is enjoying something the other can’t, or gloating over the fact the other wasn’t wise enough to order it in the first place.

Dinner jealousy, you see, is a very real thing. I can’t begin to count the number of times I have gazed longingly at the plate of a pal or lover and wanted, to quote the Katz’s customer who falls for Meg Ryan’s New York deli-based fake orgasm, “have what they’re having”. A patronizing offer of a forkful or two only ever goes so far, and if anything, makes it worse. That meager morsel of verboten fish, illicit pie, or prohibited pudding, only ever leaves you wanting more, with the food turning bitter in your mouth as regret clouds the whole evening. If only I’d asked for the lamb chop with romesco like this schmuck sat across from me, you think, I could be as smug as them. 

The menu at The Red Hen, too, is hardly a juggernaut of a thing. This isn’t a 24-course Michelin tasting menu: this is a neighborhood Italian getting by in a post-pandemic society. There are only five pasta dishes available, and what if Jill’s tummy turns at the thought of squid ink, or Joe once had a regrettable run-in with porcini? What if, shudder to think, they both wanted to experience the same rigatoni ragu and, in an adorable, we’ve-been-married-for-46-years fashion, compare notes on it during and after the meal? Stranger things have happened. 

Leonie Cooper is food and drink editor at Time Out London.