I've just finished reading an advance copy of Marco Pierre White's autobiography The Devil in the Kitchen. We'll get to a proper review later in May when it comes out. I know Marco (can I call you Marco?) was in town a few weeks ago, noshing on some pig at the counter of Momofuko Noodle Bar with Messers. Batali and Buford, and I can only guess at what kind of entertaining, all-out PR assault they must be planning. Dinners? Discussion panels? Late-night chef high-jinx at the Spotted Pig? But I digress...
The point of this post is gastrodome: a term coined in the UK in the early 1990's to describe the enormous eateries opening at the time of the big money boom, like Marco's 200-seat Canteen, circa 1992. It is my new word of the day. It's really quite perfect. It's not widely in use here, but given the increasing numbers of big box restaurants we have opening, is a nice piece of verbiage we could appropriate full-time. Try it out. Use it in a sentence...Welcome to the gastrodome. Two chefs enter, one chef leaves.
Note, there is also a UK chain of restaurants called Gastrodome, not related to the general noun use of gastrodome suggested here.
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