A Guide to Sharing Plates. How to Order, How Much to Get, and Why It Makes for a Better Evening.

Sharing plates have become one of the most common formats in modern restaurant dining, and yet they still manage to confuse people more than almost any other way of eating out.

The questions are always the same. How many dishes do we need? Do they all arrive at once? What if one person wants something the other does not? Is this going to be enough food? Should I be building a starter, a main and a dessert in my head, or is this something else entirely?

These are completely reasonable questions, and the fact that most restaurants do not answer them properly is a genuine gap. At Nectar, sharing plates are the entire format of the menu. We have been asked every version of these questions hundreds of times across eight months of service. This is our attempt to answer all of them properly, in one place, before you arrive.

What Sharing Plates Actually Are

The sharing plate format has roots across the entire Mediterranean and Middle Eastern world. In Greece it is called mezze. In Spain tapas. In Lebanon meze. In Turkey it is the spread of small dishes that arrives before everything else and often becomes everything else. The names and the specific dishes change depending on the country. The underlying idea is the same everywhere.

Rather than each person ordering their own individual meal, the table orders a collection of dishes that everyone eats from together. Dishes arrive as they are ready rather than all at once. The meal has a rhythm and a pace that is determined by the kitchen and the conversation rather than by the clock. You order in rounds, adding dishes as you go, responding to what has arrived and what the table is still hungry for.

This format is older than the starter-main-dessert structure that most British diners grew up with. It reflects a fundamentally different relationship with food: one where the meal is a reason to gather and stay rather than a transaction to be completed.

At Nectar, the entire menu is built around this idea. Everything on the food menu is designed to be shared, to arrive across the evening, and to be eaten in the way that feels right to the table rather than in a prescribed sequence.

How Much to Order

This is the question we get asked most often, and the honest answer is that it depends on more variables than any single rule can account for. That said, there are some practical starting points that work well for most tables.

As a rough guide, two dishes per person is a reasonable baseline for a comfortable meal. For a table of two, that means starting with four dishes and seeing how you feel. For a table of four, six to eight dishes gives you a good spread without overwhelming the table. These numbers assume a normal appetite and a relaxed pace. If your table eats more than average, or if you are planning a longer evening, add one or two dishes to whatever you would normally start with.

The platters on our menu are the most substantial single items. A hungry person could eat a full platter on their own, but the better experience is to share one between two and build around it with two or three dishes from the rest of the menu. That combination gives you more variety, more texture across the table, and a meal that feels complete rather than singular.

What we always recommend against is over-ordering at the start. The sharing plate format works best when you start with a considered selection, eat your way through it, and then order more based on what you actually want rather than what you thought you might want before you sat down. Ordering everything upfront turns a relaxed, evolving meal into a table that is immediately crowded and a meal that is over before it has properly begun.

Start with less than you think you need. Order more when you want it. The kitchen will keep pace with you.

The Order in Which Dishes Arrive

One of the things that takes some adjustment if you are used to traditional restaurant dining is that sharing plates do not follow a fixed sequence.

At Nectar, food is sent out as it is ready. Some dishes take longer to prepare than others. A grilled dish may arrive before a cold dish that was ordered at the same time. That is not a mistake. It is how the format is intended to work.

If you have specific preferences about the order of arrival, just let the team know when you order. If you would like the dips and lighter dishes to come first before the heavier plates, we will make sure that happens. If you want everything spread across the evening as evenly as possible, we can work to that rhythm too. The most important thing is to tell us, because we cannot read the table's intentions without a conversation.

What we would gently discourage is expecting the meal to unfold in a strict starter, main, dessert sequence. That structure is not what this format is for, and trying to impose it tends to produce a meal that feels slightly at odds with itself. Let the dishes come as they come, share them as they arrive, and let the meal find its own shape.

What to Order and Where to Start

For a first visit, the most reliable approach is to build the table around one platter and three or four dishes from the rest of the menu, chosen to cover a range of textures and flavours.

The Meat Platter is the most complete single item on the menu and a good anchor for a table that eats everything. The Veggie Platter does the same job for a table that leans vegetarian or wants a lighter centre to the meal.

Around those, we would suggest mixing cold and warm dishes, and mixing lighter and richer plates. The Cheese Filo Pastry is crisp and rich and works well early in the meal when the table is still settling in. The Prawn Saganaki is warming and deeply flavoured, a dish that suits the middle of the evening when you are fully into it. The Chicken Skewers are a lighter, cleaner option that balances well against richer dishes. The Grilled Halloumi is one of the most versatile dishes on the menu and pairs well with almost everything else.

If you want guidance when you arrive, ask the team. Recommending dishes based on what the table is in the mood for is something we genuinely enjoy doing, and a two-minute conversation at the start of the evening usually produces a better meal than twenty minutes of deliberating over the menu alone.

Sharing Plates and Dietary Requirements

One of the practical strengths of the sharing plate format is how well it accommodates different dietary requirements at the same table.

Because dishes are shared rather than individually assigned, a table can contain a meat eater, a vegetarian and someone avoiding gluten without anyone feeling like they are eating a compromise version of the meal. Roughly half of our menu is vegetarian or vegan. The other half focuses on meat and fish. A mixed table can usually find a selection of dishes that works well for everyone without anyone having to sacrifice variety.

If you have specific allergies, let the team know when you arrive or when you order. The most common ones we encounter are gluten, nuts and lactose, and we can accommodate all of those. In general, we can work around most dietary requirements, so it is always worth asking rather than assuming something is off limits.

What to Drink Alongside Sharing Plates

The sharing plate format and drinks were made for each other, because both are built around the idea of things arriving gradually across an extended evening rather than being consumed all at once.

A cocktail at the start of the meal, while the first dishes are arriving, sets the right tone. Something light and aperitif-style works well early: a spritz, something citrus-forward, a drink that opens the palate rather than filling it. As the meal progresses and the heavier dishes arrive, a glass of wine often becomes the right companion. Our Assyrtiko is the natural choice alongside seafood and lighter vegetable dishes. The Montepulciano sits naturally alongside the meat dishes, particularly anything richer or slower cooked.

The cocktail menu has been built with the food in mind. The pairings listed on the menu are suggestions rather than rules, and the team are always happy to talk you through what they would choose based on what you are eating. If you would rather trust your own instincts and order whatever sounds good to you, that is equally valid. The point of the pairing suggestions is to give people a starting point, not to prescribe the evening.

Why Sharing Plates Make for a Better Evening

The practical questions about how much to order and when things arrive are worth answering, but they are not really the point of this format.

The deeper reason sharing plates produce better evenings than individual ordering is that they change the dynamic of the table entirely. When everyone is eating from the same dishes, the conversation naturally includes the food. There is something to point at, to recommend, to pass across the table, to disagree about. The meal becomes a shared experience rather than a collection of individual ones happening simultaneously.

It also removes the particular anxiety of ordering for yourself at a restaurant and then watching someone else's dish arrive and wishing you had ordered that instead. With sharing plates, you ordered that too. It is already on its way, or already on the table, and you can reach in whenever you are ready.

Greek food has been eaten this way for thousands of years. The format survived because it works. It produces meals that last longer, tables that talk more, and evenings that people remember more clearly than a sequence of individually plated courses that arrived, were eaten, and were cleared.

That is what we are trying to create at Nectar every evening. A meal that becomes an evening. A table that becomes a conversation. Food and drink that give people a reason to stay.

Read our full menu here or book your table here.

Nectar is at 73 Broughton Street, Edinburgh EH1 3RJ. Open Tuesday to Thursday from 5pm, Friday from 5pm until 1am, Saturday from noon until 1am and Sunday from noon until 11pm.