Many of the crypto investors preparing to attend an exclusive gala dinner with US president Donald Trump have offloaded the coins that won them their seats.

This article is part of "Made to Order," a series highlighting the business strategies driving today's food industry.

When Sam Mink, the owner of Oyster House, made his way through the Philadelphia airport more than a decade ago, he wondered what it would be like to have a restaurant stationed in one of the international airport's terminals.

That may have been a premonition: This spring, Oyster House will open its second location between terminals B and C in the airport. The restaurant will seat 140 people and feature a shell-shucking station, Mink said.

He told Business Insider he understands that some people might feel skeptical when they hear the words "oysters" and "airport" in the same breath. But it's a chance Mink — and plenty of other food-and-beverage entrepreneurs across the country — are willing to take for the potential payoffs.

Across the US, airports are upping their selection of local eateries, often favoring them over nationally recognized chain restaurants and brands. Over the past two decades, this food-and-beverage trend has unfurled as part of a larger move to make airports feel more welcoming and authentic to their locales. Rather than fill US airports' fluorescent halls with more national chain restaurants, airport operators want to feature food and beverage options that speak to the cities where they're located.

"Airports, just like other concessions and concepts out there, are becoming more experiential. The airport that you're visiting can be just as much of a destination as where you're going, so it's a reflection of the local city," Liz Einhorn, a hospitality consultant and the founder of Experience Threee, told Business Insider.

Einhorn said that post-pandemic, more people are traveling just for fun, further incentivizing airport leaders to create unique and welcoming experiences.

A June report from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that leisure travel has become more popular than business travel in recent years. Within the US, travelers seek vacation opportunities year-round, compared to their European and Asian counterparts who tend to travel in the summer, the McKinsey report said.

In addition to the forthcoming Oyster House location, the Philadelphia airport is home to the Philly-born coffee roastery Elixr, the brunch favorite Sabrina's Cafe, a Geno's Steaks outpost, and, soon, a Federal Donuts and Chicken.

Chicago O'Hare International Airport has Tortas Frontera, from the award-winning chef Rick Bayless, and Berghoff Cafe, a spinoff of the city's historic German eatery. Travelers to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport can visit Lil Woody's Burgers & Shakes, which has five other non-airport locations. The Austin-Bergstrom International Airport features local favorites Salt Lick BBQ and Salvation Pizza.

For restaurant entrepreneurs, these partnerships can enhance their marketing strategies by widening brand recognition. They also require less of a hands-on approach than opening an on-the-street store location from scratch, since hospitality-group collaborators take on the bulk of the planning, which can include training staff, designing and building the space itself, and creating the menu.

Airport leaders want to make their spaces feel unique

As conduits for mass travel, airports are inherently uniform in their designs. Walking through any given airport can feel like you're moving outside time or space.

As Steve Taylor, a professor of psychology who studies consciousness, wrote in an article for The Conversation: "They are liminal zones where boundaries fade. On a literal level, national borders dissolve. Once we pass through security, we enter a no man's land, between countries. The concept of place becomes hazy."

Airport business leaders know this, so they aim to turn their airports into more tantalizing and pleasurable experiences, said Melissa K. Montes, the vice president and publisher of Airport Experience News.

"At the heart of the industry's efforts is the guest experience," Montes told BI. "For some operators, this means leveraging new technologies or offering innovative products to cater to the evolving needs of a new generation of travelers. For others, the emphasis remains on delivering personalized service that creates meaningful connections with passengers."

She added that "experiences" has become a buzzword in the industry, as retailers and restaurateurs focus on strategies for keeping travelers with limited time — and an interest in spending on authentic goods and services — engaged with their offerings.

Increasingly, airports achieve that through localized food and beverage concepts in their terminals, said Simon Lorady, a vice president at Jackmont Hospitality, the food-service group responsible for bringing Oyster House, Federal Donuts, and Elixr to the Philadelphia airport.

It's a trend Lorady, who began his career working in Philadelphia-area restaurants, said he started to notice about 15 years ago.

"Travelers were getting more educated about food. People are traveling more, they're seeing more local and new concepts coming about, especially in these popular cities," Lorady said.

These shifting consumer expectations are reflected in the requests for proposals, or RFPs, that Jackmont Hospitality and other concessionaires — the companies responsible for bringing food, beverages, and other products to various markets, like on the street or at stadiums — receive.

Instead of asking for Burger King and Auntie Anne's outposts, airports are asking for barbecue joints, seafood restaurants, local roasteries, beer gardens, and other concepts that reflect each location's unique culinary culture, Einhorn said.

Turning an airport prospect into a local partnership

Once concessionaires view an airport's RFP for localized concepts, they seek out potential partners to collaborate with — often the owners of city-specific eateries.

Lorady said that the process of winning an airport hospitality contract is both an art and a science.

"They don't tell you the brands they are looking for, but they tell you a category," Lorady told BI. He gave the example of "elevated local coffee" as a category: "Our job is to decipher that category and think, 'What do they really want there?'" In this particular case, it resulted in Jackmont Hospitality bringing Elixr coffee to the Philadelphia airport in August.

The process is often driven by concessionaries' personal relationships with restaurant owners and involves ongoing conversations about how the partnership could work since each one can vary based on an airport's requirements for leasing, staffing, and safety, Lorady said. He added that a restaurant's resources and an owner's expectations can also play a role in shaping these partnerships. Some restaurants — say, one that slow roasts its meat for several hours — simply aren't suited for an airport outpost, Einhorn said.

Mink said that a hospitality company approached him about expanding Oyster House — his family's storied seafood restaurant — to the airport nearly 10 years ago, but he turned down the offer, unsure if he was ready to expand at the time. Fast forward to 2023, when Lorady contacted Mink with a similar offer.

"I was ready to take Oyster House out of Sansom Street and work on this dream of mine," Mink told BI about expanding the business. "I love the fact that it's a licensing deal, that they do a lot of the heavy lifting, and they work with us. I feel like we're partners in creating this restaurant that will be as close to the original one as possible — but obviously, it's not going to be exactly the same."

Restaurateurs see marketing opportunities with airport collaborations

Mink and Jeff Benjamin of Federal Donuts and Chicken — another Jackmont Hospitality partner restaurant — told BI that their collaborations provide an opportunity to market their brands to an audience of hungry travelers.

"It's a secondary or tertiary model to have these, what we call, nontraditional sites. It's less for the financial upside and more for the marketing and the visibility as we grow," Benjamin, the CEO of Federal Donuts and Chicken, said.

It's also a last chance for travelers to get a taste of local restaurants that they may have missed during the visit — or that they tried and loved — as they're heading back home, Lorady said.

Travelers appear to enjoy having more local options — commenters in travel subreddits often rave about their niche airport meals. And locals on business trips — including my father, a Philadelphia native — can enjoy a taste of home, in the form of a Geno's cheesesteak, even after they've moved away.

• About one in four US adults said they ate all their meals alone the previous day, new analysis found.
• The 2025 World Happiness Report found solo dining spiked during the pandemic and remains elevated.
• Sharing meals is a stronger predictor of well-being than income or unemployment, it found.

More and more Americans are dining alone, and researchers say doing so regularly can be a better predictor of unhappiness than unemployment.

"Asking people if they shared at least one meal last week can tell us more about their overall life evaluation than knowing if they are unemployed," the researchers said in the 2025 World Happiness Report, published on Thursday.

It found that 26% of US adults surveyed said they ate every meal alone the previous day. That figure rose by more than 50% between 2003 and 2023.

The data was drawn from the American Time Use Survey, which collected responses from about 235,000 US adults over the two-decade period.

The report said people who share more meals with others report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction, and lower levels of negative affect. That's the case across ages, genders, countries, cultures, and regions.

The rise in solo dining started well before the COVID-19 pandemic, with a spike in 2011, before reaching some of the highest levels at the height of the pandemic. It's continued rising, especially for young people, with the highest levels of dining alone recorded among those under 35 — along with those who live alone.

In 2023, nearly 70% of people who lived alone reported eating all their meals alone, compared to 20% for those who lived with others.

By order of comparison, the US ranked 69th globally in meal sharing, standing behind Canada, which ranked 53rd with 8.4 meals shared a week, and ahead of the UK, which ranked 81st.

Causes and impact on happiness

The report attributes the rise in solo dining to the rise in the number of people living alone, irregular work schedules, and the rise of remote work.

While smartphones and social media are often blamed for reduced social interaction, the report found no direct correlation between the platforms' launches in the mid-2000s and the rise in eating alone.

The report also analyzed survey responses for 142 countries collected by the Gallup World Poll in 2022 and 2023. It found that sharing more meals is strongly linked to higher life evaluations and better emotional health across regions, genders, and age groups, making it a key factor in overall life satisfaction.

The happiness report finds that meal sharing is a stronger predictor of well-being than income and unemployment combined, and dining alone has a greater impact on life evaluation than unemployment.

The US slipped to its lowest ranking in the 13-year history of the World Happiness Report, landing at 24th place, partly because of the rising number of people eating alone.

Another issue highlighted in the report is the US's high and increasing rate of "deaths of despair" — preventable deaths from suicide, alcohol abuse, and drug overdose.

Since the report's launch in 2012, the US has never ranked in the top 10, with its highest ranking being 11th in the report's first year.

• Business Insider asked an etiquette expert what people should avoid doing at high-end restaurants.
• She said diners should never disregard the waitstaff or arrive late to their reservation.
• She also recommended checking the restaurant's dress code to avoid dressing inappropriately.

Going out to a high-end restaurant can be a luxurious experience. But for patrons who are used to more casual dining experiences, eating at a fancy restaurant can be stressful.

To learn more about everything from how to dress to how to interact with the waitstaff, Business Insider asked Elaine Swann, a lifestyle and etiquette expert, to identify four common mistakes diners should avoid making at high-end restaurants. Here's what she said.

This article is part of "Made to Order," a series highlighting the business strategies driving today's food industry.

On a recent night over spring rolls and mango salad, I spoke with more people than I had in months, from grandparents to young professionals.

That's the point: The Dinner Table is one of many businesses popping up to feed a growing appetite for a new kind of dining experience. It's the opposite of fast-casual — a slow, dinner-party-style meetup meant to turn strangers into friends — if only for a night.

Tyler Tep cofounded The Dinner Table in his apartment after living in New York for about three years. He wanted to find a way to contribute to the city's culture. What started with friends soon morphed into public, ticketed events at restaurants in New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and, soon, Miami. Tep said they'd been flooded with inbound requests to expand to new cities.

"That tells me that there's untapped demand that we are not currently capitalizing on," Tep said. "And there's so much opportunity and need for these sort of social dining communities in different parts across the United States, which is great to see that there's an appetite for that."

At a time when flakiness reigns, friend circles are shrinking, and we're spending more time alone than ever before, dinner clubs have sprung up to fill the void left by our shrinking third spaces: shared places that are neither work nor home but a venue meant to give us an opportunity to be around others. Access to third spaces has narrowed over the past few decades as younger generations have grappled with their own social disconnection and loneliness; dinner clubs with strangers might just help scratch that itch.

But the food and beverage business is already tough, and the new ventures bring their own challenges. Starting something isn't cheap, especially in a space at the intersection of the events and restaurant industries, where profit margins tend to be thin. And some dinner club creators are paying their own way. Even so, they believe that dinner clubs can be a salve for a lonelier world. They're making it work by doing what they can — whether that means holding a second job, working the kitchen themselves, or keeping a menu as tight as possible to reduce waste.

"I've learned so much about what it means to run a business, to manage people, to work with sales and to partner with restaurants and just navigating the food and bev and restaurant industry itself," Tep said.

In any events business, there's always unpredictability and unforeseen challenges — spacing might be constrained, or restaurants might be filled to the brim with other diners. Even so, Tep said, "I look back on the experience, and while it is a lot of work, it's also really fulfilling to see that this is something that I've built myself — and it's really cool."

Busting loneliness and running an 'anti-restaurant'

Joy Watts, the executive chef of Dinner Party in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill neighborhood, describes her workplace as an "anti-restaurant restaurant." Instead of simply serving up dishes to guests, it functions as a nightly dinner party. It was founded in 2021, when Cami Jetta — a New Yorker who did not have restaurant experience but knew she had the chops to host a 20-person dinner party — began offering picnic-style meals and, later, dinner-party-style events with communal seating. Now the concept has moved to a larger, permanent space.

"A lot of people work from home these days. A lot of people just either go to the office and back," Watts said. "You have your tight, little bubbles that you operate in. And so to be able to go to a place where you pretty much could be guaranteed to meet someone who you don't know, or speak to someone who you've never met, is really special and hard to find."

Even though there's a demand for dinner parties, the concept has financial pressures, especially as part of the food and beverage industry, which has razor-thin margins.

Dinner Party has a two-week set menu, which has helped it keep down waste and costs compared with when it used to change its offerings weekly. Another challenge is a generous reservation period and cancellations. At a traditional restaurant, someone canceling might mean the loss of a patron who would've grabbed a glass of wine and a snack. At Dinner Party, a party cancellation might mean a $400 to $500 loss, Watts said, since the prix fixe menu costs about $64 to $80 a person, depending on the night.

"To fill those seats last minute, it's not like you're just asking someone to meet you out at the most-casual-ever dinner. It's a little bit more of something to be going to," Watts said. "So I think that those cancellations, paired with the fact that people don't really just spontaneously decide to come to Dinner Party day of, just makes seats harder to fill when we have last-minute changes."

When I visited Lucky Dinner Club, my fellow diners knew about these industry challenges all too well. Almost the entire kitchen staff of another upscale restaurant joined the table, enjoying bottles of wine, stacks of sourdough grilled cheese, and piles of honeyed focaccia.

We're here because of Gabrielle Macafee, a 29-year-old based in Brooklyn. Lucky Dinner Club started in her railroad apartment in early 2022 when she wanted to throw a dinner party for some friends after falling in love with cooking during the pandemic. Since then, she's hosted dinners all over the city at different restaurants, working the kitchen in venues big and small.

Macafee said that there are months when the income can sustain her, but amid the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, she also does creative work on the side. Like many small-business owners, she's starting with a passion project — it's just not possible right now for it to be a full-time job, she said.

"I think people just ultimately want to break that fourth wall, and they want to have a reason to break the fourth wall," she said, adding: "It's more of a safe space for people to be able to come and not have the societal pressure of performing."

When Macafee started out, she made Lucky Dinner "pay what you wish." But she said that meant she was "hemorrhaging money"; ultimately, she set a price of about $50 a person. During my visit, the meal was à la carte, meaning we paid for only what we eat.

"Now with rising food costs, I'm trying to keep it as accessible as possible because I want a certain type of person to be able to come," she said. "And that's usually a more creative person who's not in it for solely the Instagram content."

Solving the long-term finances of hosting dinner parties

The dinner party equation is hard to solve even for people with more restaurant experience, though the much-lauded Ambra in Philadelphia is working to crack the code. Its co-owner Chris D'Ambro said that prepandemic, the small restaurant had more traditional seating — five tables in a dining room, with multiple seatings a night.

When D'Ambro and the team re-signed their lease in the middle of 2020, they decided to rethink how the dining room was set up. They wanted a more fun experience for both workers and patrons. Now it's one seating a night, and restaurant patrons will often find themselves at a communal table that seats about eight to 12. D'Ambro said that at first, they anticipated whole parties would book the larger table. Instead, folks have been booking in smaller configurations; couples or groups of friends come in and sit with fellow diners who had the same idea. It's turned into a 3 ½-hour dinner party — a true experience.

"The tables inevitably end up talking about what restaurants they've been to in the city and all these things," he said. "It's fun to hear and facilitate these little groups, some of which have become friends and have come in together subsequently."

A group of 10 people met at Ambra and are still on a text chain a year later, D'Ambro said. And often, folks end up keeping the party going at his Southwark bar in the same building. That restaurant helps to cover the bills for the building, D'Ambro said; Ambra was never meant to be a stand-alone venue.

Even so, Ambra has been sold out almost every night, D'Ambro said.

"I think I was very nervous that people would be in there talking politics and religion, or somebody would be carrying the conversation too much and the table would be annoyed with the one person. But everybody's been cool and it's been good," he said. "The biggest surprise on a good level has been that I see these people wanting to carry on their evening and continue to hang out even after dinner."

Meanwhile, Tep is self-funding The Dinner Table, but he said the events had been profitable.

"I never saw The Dinner Table being what it is today, and I'm immensely proud of what it has become. And now what I do see is the potential of what it can be and how much interest there is in it," he said, adding: "I have the saying that 'I'm playing with house money,' in the sense that no matter what happens, what I've already done with The Dinner Table is amazing."

• Global trend forecaster WGSN says Gen Z is bringing back supper clubs.
• It comes as young people are seeking social activities that don't involve alcohol.
• A Gen Z supper clubber said she and her peers are "graduating" from their clubbing phase.

When Ananya Sharma, a 25-year-old marketing manager, moved from India to London in 2023, she knew next to no one.

Having grown up in a tight-knit community where close friends or family were never too far, isolation dawned on her.

"I felt like, 'I'm pretty much the only person in London that doesn't have friends'," she told Business Insider.

While there's no shortage of events and apps geared toward in-person socializing in cities like London, Sharma wasn't a fan. They're "intimidating," she said, and often make you feel as if "you almost have to perform a little bit to appeal to people."

At the same time, like many Gen Zers, the idea of going to a bar or nightclub to meet new people had lost its charm. As Sharma puts it, she's "graduating" from her clubbing and drinking phase into enjoying "more wholesome activities."

Options limited, Sharma turned to supper clubs — a dining concept that commonly involves hosting friends and perfect strangers for a meal in your own home.

Although supper clubs date back to the 1900s, global trend forecaster WGSN says they're making a 21st-century comeback with an increasing number of young people "hosting their own supper clubs, themed parties, and unique dining experiences for their chosen families."

A connection you can only find at home

Sharma likes to call her version of a supper club an "at-home café."

When she started it last year, the first iterations were relatively low-stakes — the guest list comprised a couple of neighbors, her landlady, and her landlady's daughters, and the menu included coffee, matcha, and homemade cookies.

Things soon picked up. After posting about her supper club online, Sharma said hundreds of strangers started reaching out — some of whom have become friends.

"I recently did one with a bunch of my friends that I've made through TikTok," Sharma said. "It was a great way to sit down and have conversations in an intimate setting."

For Aidan Brooks, a professional chef who runs an established supper club called Eleven 98 from his home in east London, the young generations' fascination speaks to their changing values.

"Each subsequent generation is becoming more health conscious, more environmentally conscious," he said. "If people are looking for a more socially and health-conscious type of thing to do, supper clubs kind of pop up at the top of both of those lists."

In an era when prices are rising yet dining options seem endless, Punam Vaja, host of another east London supper club called Khao Suppers, told BI that supper clubs offer young people a chance to form connections over a more budget-friendly experience that you "probably won't find in a restaurant."

Unlike restaurant chefs who stick to certain menus, supper club hosts can easily take "creative liberties," Sharma, the Gen Z supper club host, said.

"I've seen so many other people who do regional cuisines or themed dinners or lunches," she said. "I heard someone do a 1980s Italian disco-themed supper club, which I thought was so cool."

Looking for friends, IRL

In the years since the pandemic, Gen Z has developed a reputation as "Generation Stay At Home." They care less about climbing the corporate ladder, are more health conscious, and very much enjoy spending weekends "bed rotting," aka tucked between the sheets with snacks, TV, and books on rotation, rather than at a bar.

That doesn't mean they aren't social. On the contrary, supper clubs may go to show that they are even more open to connecting with others than older generations.

Vaja said young people are more open to a supper club experience that requires entering a stranger's house than "older people" who "might be a bit hesitant" because they're used to restaurants.

To Ariel Pastore-Sebring, a supper club host based in Portland, Oregon, the supper club renaissance may be a symptom of how Gen Z missed years of socializing during the pandemic.

"It's so intimate, and I think that's what this next generation is craving, especially after COVID," she said. "I could see why the idea of cramming into some New York City apartment with strangers at a candlelit table sounds pretty cool."

As a night out on the town loses its cool, 2025 could be the year of the supper club.

• Chili's has been having a moment on social media, helped by people testing promotional deals.
• The "Triple Dipper" and "3 For Me" offerings have caught the eyes of new and returning customers.
• I went to my local Chili's to check out the vibes and taste the viral menu items.

It's been a tough few years for a lot of food chains. One that seems to be bucking the trend is Chili's.

So, I went along on a Friday night with my best friend to see who was eating at one of their restaurants in Queen's, NY, what they seemed to be ordering, and what the vibes were like.

What I found was that Chili's seems to be a go-to for a wide range of families, sports fans, and friends at the start of the weekend. And me, a 24-year-old writer from Houston.

As a disclaimer, I'm somewhat of a regular at Chili's, so I know my way around the menu. I hadn't been on a popular weekend night, however, and I was surprised at how busy it was. We didn't mind because this location is situated in a strip mall where we could kill time strolling stores.

Brinker International, the parent company of Chili's, reported a 7.4% increase in same-store sales at Chili's for 2024, and sales jumped 14% on the same basis in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, which ended in September 2024.

The uptick in sales seemed to be reflected at our restaurant. We walked into a packed host area with patrons in line to be seated and a wait time of 45 minutes to an hour at 9 p.m. — something I'd expect more from a trendy restaurant in Manhattan. The other food options in the area were mostly fast-casual with limited seating, save for California Pizza Kitchen.

Once we were seated (in less than 45 minutes), we immediately ordered the viral Triple Dipper appetizer.

If you're new to Chili's, the Triple Dipper is a sampler of appetizers that can be customized to your preferences for under $20. We chose the cheeseburger sliders, chicken tenders, and egg rolls for our three selections.

The Triple Dipper has gained a following online, with TikTokers showing anything from cheese pulls (a video of the epic stretchy string of cheese from mozzarella sticks) to first-timers filming themselves trying the options. These value meals, which we wrote about late last year, are helping the restaurant chain grow, Chili's CMO George Felix said, and they're not going anywhere soon.

In fact, we overheard the table next to us telling the server that it was their first time at Chili's, and they ordered a Triple Dipper too.

For our drinks, we chose the "Marg of the Month": a $6 margarita called "the Resolution Breaker." It's made with tequila, pineapple juice, fresh sour, mango syrup, and Sprite. The price for a cocktail seemed pretty reasonable compared to a lot of places in the five boroughs.

While other eateries have been trying to bring customers back with promotional deals, Chili's has been building momentum. Alongside the "Triple Dipper," the "3 For Me" deal offers an appetizer, entrée, and drink starting at $10.99.

My best friend went for that but upgraded to the six-ounce sirloin for $16.99, with chips and salsa as her appetizer. I decided to get a Chili's classic that I hadn't had in years: the baby back ribs.

Similar to the "3 For Me" or "Triple Dipper," the "Smokehouse Combo" is a customizable plate of barbecue and sides. I got two proteins and two sides for $22.49, which I enjoyed — but saved some for home. I barely touched the ribs by the time I'd finished off my portion of the "Triple Dipper" and our chips and salsa.

We stayed until the last call at the bar, around 10:30 p.m. The dining room stayed packed throughout our hour-and-a-half dinner. I observed families, people just hanging out at the bar watching sports, and a few girls-night-out tables, like us. Servers circulated around the dining room nonstop, it seemed.

Our total check came out to just under $100. We had two alcoholic drinks each, two appetizers, and two entrées, so not a bad deal by New York standards. I'll definitely be back for another "Triple Dipper," but I think I'll stick to weeknights to avoid the crowds and focus on my food.

• A chef shared the red flags she looks out for when ordering a tasting menu at a high-end restaurant.
• It's not a great sign if you can't find the price of the food or how long the meal will take.
• If the wine pairings cost as much as the food, it may signify that the meal isn't a great value.

Many high-end restaurants offer curated multicourse tasting menus — elaborate, time-consuming, and often expensive ways of dining out that are about more than just food.

Telly Justice, the executive chef and coowner of the fine-dining restaurant HAGS in Manhattan, told Business Insider she was skeptical going into her first tasting-menu experience at a three-star Michelin restaurant.

However, she had an incredible time and said the craftsmanship, care, and artistry were apparent in every aspect of the menu.

Now, Justice holds that experience as the gold standard as both a diner and a chef.

Here are a few red flags the chef keeps an eye out for when choosing the tasting menu at a fine-dining restaurant.

It's unclear how much the meal costs

If you can't find the prices listed for menu items, the restaurant is probably "a space for people that don't need to know the prices," Justice said.

It's kind of a code to let you know that if you need to budget for this meal, it's probably not for you.

The chef said the lack of prices could also mean the place is likely to take you and your wallet for a bit of a ride.

The menu feels overwhelmingly wordy

"Menus that do too much talking and explaining tend to flag to me that this is somebody that has an insecurity with their cuisine that the food itself can't speak and explain the concept on its own," Justice said.

She prefers simple menus over ones packed with complex jargon, industry speak, or technical words.

"If you have to write a paragraph about a dish before I even enter the restaurant, I'm already exhausted," she told BI.

No clear thread or theme connects the courses

Justice said it is "essential" that high-end tasting menus tie each course together somehow, whether through a vague theme or specific thread.

A lack of clear connection in the menu usually signals to her that the chef or investors are just scattering seeds to see what works.

"At that price point and for this kind of style of dining you want somebody that knows exactly what they're good at," she said.

You're not told how long your meal will be

Restaurants should be able to clearly communicate the number of courses they'll serve and the length of the meal.

If this isn't clear, she said, the experience could be "all about the ego of the chef" and signify that diners' time isn't a priority.

If you do get an estimated timeframe, the eatery should stick to it.

"A restaurant should be able to keep a promise to its diners," she added. "If you say dinner's gonna be two hours, then I'm gonna plan my life around that."

There's a lot of pressure to pay for extras

Many tasting menus give diners the option to pay for extras like caviar courses, dish upgrades, or wine pairings.

Although these can be a lovely addition to your dining experience, Justice said, you shouldn't feel pressured to pay for extras, and your meal shouldn't feel less-than if you don't.

Wine pairings cost the same as the food

Justice told BI "there should be a gap" between the cost of the wine pairings and the tasting menu itself.

When the two are close in cost, it signals to her that either the food is improperly priced or the wine is too expensive to be used reasonably in that pairing.

"If you want to showcase really boutique, expensive, collectible wines, then it's awesome to have a higher-end tasting available for serious, serious drinkers," she said. "But in reality, most people that go to tasting menus are not exclusively looking to spend $1,000 a meal."

She said it's a good sign when an eatery offers multiple-tier options and price points for its wine pairings.

The space just doesn't feel comfortable or warm

Tasting menus "tend to be long experiences," so Justice pays attention to whether the restaurant has created a generally comfortable and safe space.

She asks questions, like: "Do the chairs have backs? Do I feel like I can sit here for two to three hours and not leave feeling like I just got run over by a car?"

Justice also observes the vibe of the staff in the dining room, noting the interactions between servers, front-of-house workers, and customers. For example, they shouldn't seem scared of their bosses or overly apologetic to diners.

Lastly, she checks to see if the restaurant is ADA-compliant — a diner in a wheelchair, for example, should be able to have as good an experience as anyone else.

Overall, Justice said, these sorts of things speak volumes about the type of hospitality a diner can expect.

• Value meals at Chili's have boosted the restaurant chain's sales lately.
• Chili's chief marketing officer says the deals aren't leaving the menu anytime soon.
• Competitors like McDonald's and Wendy's also offer value meals amid inflation challenges.

Appetizers and value meals are bringing customers to their local Chili's Grill & Bar in droves — and they're not leaving the menu anytime soon.

Deals like the Triple Dipper and the 3 for Me combo, both of which allow customers to get sit-down meals for under $20, have helped Chili's parent company, Brinker International, beat quarterly expectations recently. Same-store sales grew nearly 15% at Chili's during the company's latest quarter, which ended in September.

Those affordable deals are standing parts of the restaurant's menu, not temporary offers, George Felix, chief marketing officer at Chili's, said.

While some restaurant chains are "scrambling to throw a low-priced offer out there and try and compete," the 3 for Me deal "is something we believe in," Felix told Business Insider.

3 for Me offers diners a starter, an entrée, and a drink for as little as $10.99. Chili's has offered the combo for about two years, and it added a smash burger as an entrée option in April — a move the company said took "aim at fast food" at the time.

Other restaurant chains have ramped up deals this year to attract customers, including many whose budgets have been stretched by inflation, back to their dining rooms. McDonald's, for instance, is planning to launch a new value menu in 2025 after extending a limited-time $5 meal this year. Burger King and Wendy's have also offered their own value meals.

Meanwhile, Red Lobster discontinued its $20 endless shrimp deal, which was meant to be a permanent menu item, and ultimately blamed the promotion for an $11 million loss in Q3 2023.

For Chili's, offering food options that range from less than $11 to over $30 allows diners to choose what sort of experience they have, Felix said.

"We believe value is not about the lowest price point," Felix said. "We believe value is what you get for what you pay."

The Triple Dipper is an appetizer sampler that's been having a viral moment on social media recently.

Many Chili's customers who come in for such deals return and order higher-priced items, such as a margarita, which can cost as much — or more — than some of Chili's value meals, Felix said.

"You bring them in with the Triple Dipper, but then they come back again and it's the Don Julio margarita — they treat themselves," Felix told BI. (That margarita cost $12 when ordered for pickup in New York on Tuesday.)

It shows that even diners looking for good deals will splurge, CEO Kevin Hochman said on Chili's October earnings call. "The price-quality equation is critical for this guest," Hochman said.

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• I ate at Kwame Onwuachi's new restaurant, Dōgon, in Washington, DC.
• We ordered coco bread, piri piri salad, chicken and rice, oxtails, and rum cake.
• Our tasty dinner was $244, and I'm already looking forward to my next meal there.

Kwame Onwuachi was only 25 when he appeared on "Top Chef: California" in 2015.

Just four years later, he was named Rising Star Chef of the Year by the James Beard Foundation, Chef of the Year by Esquire, and one of the best new chefs by Food and Wine — all thanks to his restaurant, Kith/Kin, in Washington, DC.

Although I didn't get to visit Kith/Kin before it closed in 2020, I was excited to be able to dine at the chef's latest DC venture: Dōgon.

The Afro-Caribbean restaurant's buzzy opening has been covered by the likes of Vogue, Forbes, and Eater — but, as a restaurant critic, I was curious to check it out myself.

Here's what it's like to dine at Dōgon.