We’ve got choices when it comes to dining. Maybe too many. In many cities internationally, you can order pretty much any dish you want from anywhere in the world, and have it delivered in an hour. This overwhelming variety might explain the rising popularity of hyper-focused restaurants.
The Avocado Show in Amsterdam, slated to open in February is a prime example: the eatery and bar will serve all-avocado-everything for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night snacks, and plans to do delivery too.
There’s reason to believe the eatery will succeed. Avocado is huge right now. The avocado burger bun has been widely embraced by foodies, offering a healthy (if not necessarily calorically lighter) alternative to the traditional bread option. And buns are just the beginning, considering we now have avocado beer. In fact, the fruit’s so hot that Vice writes, ”our obsession with guacamole has created an avocado black market.”
The Avocado Show founders—Julien Zaal, Ron Simpson, and chef Jaimie van Heije—told Algemeen Dagblad, a local Dutch newspaper, that the menu possibilities are endless, saying, “Our only rule is that the dishes need to contain the green super fruit in one way or another.”
So far, the planned menu includes oddities like a chocolate-avocado smoothie, and standard fare, like avocado on toast. This focused approach is already proving successful, garnering the as-yet-unopened business international press on the strength of its concept, promoted on social media.
“I saw a rise in popularity of mono-dish restaurants; the typical burger joint, the surf and turf place, or the salad bar.” Avocado Show owner Ron Simpson told Vice’s Munchies. “After that, I saw not mono, but main ingredient restaurants pop up, like a truffle diner in Brussels, and classics like The Garlic Queen. Then, I looked at the internet and how people react to certain products like Nutella, Oreo, and peanut butter and figured I want to find a main mono ingredient that’s adaptable to almost anything.”
The avocado was a natural choice. It’s a fruit with meaty qualities, both healthy and fatty, and very versatile. The Avocado Show will open in De Pijp, Amsterdam’s hipster neighborhood.
The trend is international. Last year, in November, the Japanese ramen chain Ichiran, which serves only one thing—ramen in a pork broth—opened a location in New York. In 2015, the British restaurant-finding app, Zomato, noted that 10% of restaurants that opened in London that year were mono-dish eateries, Trendset UK reported. Similarly, wine lists were being pared down around town.
The days of the laden menu are done. Now that we really can have it all, it seems that less is more when it comes to restaurants.