With just one dish on the menu, this Sydney restaurant is a cure for decision fatigue

Dining out isn’t as easy as people think. First you have to decide where to go. Then you’ll be asked to choose between counter or table seating, inside or out, and what time you want to dine.

Don’t think you can relax when you get there. Craft beer or Old Fashioned? Oysters or chicken-liver crostini? If oysters, which oysters and with which vinaigrettes? Already my poor, end-of-the-working-day mind is spinning and I haven’t even tackled whether to have the Black Opal wagyu MB7 rump cap or the Speckle Park 600g rib-eye.

Our old friend, late-stage capitalism, dictates that there be choice at every turn, which means countless tiny decisions must be made every minute of the day. At times, it’s overwhelming.

So to hear tell of a restaurant in Sydney that offers just a single main course is like an island in a choppy sea: a place of refuge. In true Henry Ford style, you can have any main course you like at 24 York, as long as it’s steak frites.

A 220-gram, grass-fed, MB2+ Black Angus O’Connor scotch fillet, to be precise, with fries and sauce, from the same team that runs Rockpool Bar & Grill. It’s a nod to the famous Le Relais de L’Entrecote in Paris, which opened with a single dish in 1959 and is still going strong.

In Victoria, restaurants still insist on giving you choice. Melbourne’s Entrecote in Prahran (no relation) does a fine line in steak frites but lists so many other options it makes my brain hurt.

Even the Pancake Parlour, which you’d think would stick to pancakes, now offers scotch fillet steak with cottage fries, salad and gravy. At least it comes with a potato pancake.

Singapore’s hawker stalls pioneered the single-dish model back in the 1800s when each street vendor would cook just one specialty. Today’s hawker centres are now collections of individual specialists, with one stall doing nothing but mee pok flat yellow noodles with fish balls, and the next serving bak kut teh – meaty pork bones cooked in a peppery broth.

No choice = no decisions = no stress. It’s liberating.

In fact, I’d race into 24 York right now for steak frites, if it weren’t for the fact that they offer a choice of three different sauces. Damn. They were so close to getting it right.

theemptyplate@goodweekend.com.au