Hands up if you have more than one child. Now ask yourself: where did the love for that second prince or princessling come from? Was it deducted at checkout from the firstborn? Or, as I suspect, did your heart do something extraordinary: expand to fill your new universe?
My experience of dessert1 is much the same. No matter how garlic-buttery the escargot or how crackling the pork belly, when it comes to dining out, there is always, always room for pudding.
The appetite grows in the eating
Partly, this is because, biologically speaking, our brains are wired for sweetness. In a savannah of scarcity, sugar packed one heck of a calorific punch. Of course, this is 2026, around 10% of Americans are on GLP-1s and when it comes to the rest, there are only so many fibs you can tell your dental hygienist.2
Let’s be real: no one goes out for dinner because they’re hungry. They go to celebrate a special occasion, catch up with friends or avoid the washing-up. And when it comes to dessert, it’s about the pursuit not of fullness but completeness. We crave the catharsis of ending on a sugar high that we get to share with the people we love.
I mean, when was the last time you ordered soup with “two spoons, please”? Instead, the crème brûlée lands like a trademark Max Martin pop song key change and it’s like, “Yes. That’s how it was always meant to end.”
Historically, restaurants have been only too happy to oblige. But that is subtly changing.
What’s that got to do with the price of fish?
It’s never a good time to open a restaurant. One fundamental problem the sector faces is a combination of relatively low margins with high fixed costs, perishable inventory, labour-intensive production and limited capacity. Throw in regulatory hurdles (it’s a business that relies on indoor fires) and the sheer absence of scale economies and it’s a wonder any survive the winter.
And the last few years have been especially challenging. There was that time in 2020 when people were largely banned from leaving their homes, swiftly followed by various energy shocks, relentless food price inflation, minimum wage rises, higher interest rates and in Britain, hikes to business taxation.
Restaurants can raise their prices, but that comes with obvious downsides. Customers are facing their own financial pressures, and eating out is often one of the first luxuries to go. Not least when even ‘casual’ options such as Wagamama can now quite easily set a family of four back £100.
“It’s quarter after midnight. The pastry chef usually stays on till dawn.” — Sam Seaborn
Drinks, and alcohol in particular, form a core profit centre, which is why you are automatically handed a wine list without even asking but the dessert menu is preceded by a question. Wine is typically marked up two to three times, and critically does not consume much time or labour to serve, beyond fetching it from the cellar.
Then there can be decent margins on meals with lower cost ingredients that still command perceived value, such as pasta, risotto and chicken dishes. Pudding should be on that list. There are no quality beef cuts, bluefin tuna or saffron on the dessert menu. Instead, the cost is of the opportunity variety.