Why tasting menus work (and why we keep ours at seven)

A tasting menu is a negotiation. You give up choice, we give you the best possible version of the evening. Done badly it's a hostage situation with cutlery. Done well it's the best meal format a kitchen can offer.

Seven courses is not an accident. It's the number where each plate still lands as an event rather than an endurance test. I've eaten twenty-course menus; I remember four of them.

The arc matters more than the count. Cold to warm, light to rich, sharp to soft. Our menu opens with the oyster's salinity specifically because it resets the palate and hands the evening a starting gun.

Courses one through three land in the first hour, because attention is highest early. The middle courses slow deliberately; the marron gets the longest interval in the menu because it's the course people photograph, discuss and remember.

The wine pairing sets the tempo as much as the kitchen does. Amelia's team paces pours to the same arc, which is why the pairing at a good table tastes inevitable rather than added.

It's for people who want the kitchen's best answer rather than their own guess. If you read a menu top to bottom weighing options, that's a different good evening, and the à la carte card exists for it.

The guests who get the most from the format are the ones who stop negotiating halfway through. Eat the oyster, trust the lamb, let the custard close the argument.