Too little? Too much? Enough!

Braised in red wine, the short ribs are served over pureed potatoes with caramelized shallots and a rich, deep sauce spooned around. Sauteed asparagus spears top the generous portion, which is presented on one of those 12-inch white plates that used to seem oversized way back when.

This is a small plate?

Well, that’s what the chef is calling it, for I’m in that dining netherworld known as a small-plates restaurant. You know, as in “small plates for sharing.”

If life were as it should be, the dish would be set directly before me and I’d be digging in, hunkering down with the short ribs, enjoying the velvety puree and wine-dark sauce, sipping a glass of Cabernet in between bites. But instead, to get a taste, I have to reach across the table, carving out a chunk with my fork.

Serving myself short ribs from a shared plate here at Violet in Santa Monica isn’t too much of a problem; the meat is fork-tender, after all, and I can easily nab an asparagus spear. Getting a taste of the New York steak is another story, however; the 6-ounce portion isn’t sliced, and we don’t have steak knives.

Excuse my reach.

Yes, these two “small plates” look suspiciously like big plates. The short ribs are plated just as a main course would be, complete with vegetable garnish. As for the steak, which comes with grilled onions and a pile of frites, it’s not exactly tiny; most chefs consider 6 ounces of protein to be a main-course portion.

The small-plates trend, it seems, has gone haywire. At some restaurants, small plates are huge; at others, you might need a magnifying glass to see them. Some are terrific values; others are outrageous rip-offs.

Literal interpretation

At a recent visit to Nine-Thirty, the restaurant at the W Hotel in Westwood, a $9 order of merguez-stuffed dates wrapped in crisp bacon landed on my table, and there were just three little dates. Now that plate was small. Served on a piquillo pepper puree, the dates were delicious, but yiker-McGikers -- it’s not easy to share three between four people. At the same restaurant, four small tiger shrimp served with sauteed frisee, “melted” tomatoes and horseradish gremolata cost $17. Tasty, sure, but was I being fleeced? Would we leave hungry?

But wait -- the next “small plate” came: mussels served on a hot cast-iron skillet. Mmm, good. And gigantic! My son and I, curious, counted them: There were 44 mussels. A big plate if ever there was one.

Big plates, small plates -- who can tell the difference any more?

And you know what? I don’t want to share. One small plate as an appetizer and a big plate as a main course are just dandy. Dessert, one per person, completes the natural order of things.

Since the small-plates craze started in L.A. several years ago, it’s devolved into a format that has lost its meaning.

At Yi Cuisine on 3rd Street in Los Angeles, there aren’t just small plates and big plates, but medium plates and side plates. And listed before the small plates are salads and raw dishes. So, are those smaller than the small plates?

A server sized it up like this: “The left side of the menu -- those are all basically small plates. And the medium plates and the big plates are all about the same size, except the big-plate pork shank is the biggest of the big plates.” OK, then.

At Yu Restaurant & Lounge, a pan-Asian small plates hot spot in Santa Monica, a teriyaki-glazed salmon fillet served on a 10-inch-square platter, weighs in at 5 ounces, according to chef Andrew DeGroot; it comes with an 8-ounce cup of forbidden rice. A “small plate” of chili kimchi fried rice is two cups of rice.

So what are these chefs thinking?

“For small plates,” says Jared Simons, chef-owner of Violet, “the size of the plate doesn’t matter. I could have a 50-inch plate, the whole tabletop.” He’d still call them small plates, he says.

Eric Greenspan, former executive chef at Meson G, Tim and Liza Goodell’s Melrose Avenue small-plates restaurant, says that deciding how much food should be on a small plate presents a challenge to the chef. “Is there enough food on the plate, not enough? Are you plating it in an effective way, so people are sure there is enough food on the plate? That’s a big challenge,” he says.

And perceived value is a challenge for diners, says Greenspan. “When we first opened [Meson G], a lot of people said the portions were too small.”

“They’re like tapas,” is a common refrain from the wait staff.

But they’re not like tapas. Tapas are like tapas -- that is, easy-to-share snacks designed to tide you over before a late dinner. In traditional tapas bars in Spain, that means bites of fried seafood, small slices of octopus and potato, chunks of chorizo, canapes with roasted peppers and sardines, and so on. You don’t need a steak knife to eat tapas, and you can order them one or two at a time.

I was shocked to learn that sometimes small plates are not for sharing. Yu may be a “small-plates” restaurant, but DeGroot says he intends only two of the dishes (the chili kimchi fried rice and the vegetable fried rice) to be served family-style. I didn’t have a clue about that when I dined there with three friends -- and maybe the server didn’t either, placing everything in the center of the table.

Yet that’s what DeGroot told me when I interviewed him.

“You’re doing small plates, but not small plates for sharing?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said.

OK, but how’s the diner supposed to know that? And how is a 5-ounce portion of salmon with a small mountain of rice a small plate for one person? Service at Yu was wonderfully attentive, yet no one explained the chef’s intentions.

At a recent dinner at Meson G, a request to order in two “flights” was met with resistance. “We can do that,” said the waiter, frowning, “but you’ll probably have to wait at least a half-hour for the second order if you do.” Maybe that would have been worthwhile. As it was, the dishes we had selected under the beginnings section of the menu, including hearts of palm salad with sweet soppressata, came after several hot dishes.

Dine at a small-plates restaurant and, more often than not, plates inevitably blanket your table. And when the server arrives with more, someone winds up doing a juggling act. It’s hardly conducive to relaxed dining.

“You have to have a great wait staff to do [small plates],” says Greenspan, “and not everyone does.”

The chef’s choice

So if small plates are a challenge to diners, a challenge to chefs and a challenge to servers, why are we subjected to them?

Probably because they work for restaurateurs, including chef-owners. Small plates tend to have fewer components than traditional plates do, so chefs can offer diners, as Simons puts it, “more variety without giving them more choices.” In other words, chefs don’t have to offer a choice of fried, mashed or baked potatoes with the steak; nor would it occur to most small-plate diners to request substitutions.

And then there’s the labor issue. If the chef doesn’t have to worry about whether a table has finished its appetizers so the kitchen can “fire” (or start cooking) the main courses, timing is less crucial and fewer line cooks may be required. “We can do what some people might need another one or two people for if they were doing the same volume with larger-sized plates,” Simons says.

But probably most importantly, small plates appeal to the way many chefs themselves like to eat. “I’ll order a lot of different dishes because I want a lot of different tastes,” says Greenspan. “Every chef dreams of doing tasting menus all day because obviously that’s the best way to eat. I thought small plates would be a good way to do that, but without the 2 1/2 -hour commitment.”

Greenspan plans to open his own restaurant (in partnership with Brian Armenio, formerly of Norman’s and Campanile), in the near future. But it won’t be a small-plates restaurant.

“For me, at the end of the day, everybody in our culture is used to eating appetizers and entrees,” he says. “You’re not going to find anyone saying, ‘I hate that format. I hate appetizers and entrees.’ ”

Amen.

Times staff writer Betty Baboujon contributed to this report.