According to the Zagat Guide, The Tasting Room turns out the 14th best meal in Manhattan, and it does so in a space only slightly bigger than the average New Yorker's living room.

Photo by Noah David Smith

"It's a little smaller than what we were originally looking for," said chef Colin Alevras, who opened the 11 table establishment with his culinary school sweetheart Renee, five years ago. "But at the time, we had no track record, so opening a restaurant on this scale made it a little less frightening for us."

With such limited room in their East Village eatery, the Alevrases adapted the menu to the space. Their “spontaneous American” style changes according to what Alevras digs up at the greenmarket each morning, because limited refrigerator capacity makes daily shoping an absolute necessity. One night, the eclectic entrees might include poached phesant with apples and burdock. The restaurant doesn’t offer extras like soft drinks, decaf coffee, skim milk, or beer. There simply isn’t room.

The 360-square-foot kitchen, situated directly below the dining room within the building’s original cinderblock cellar, is neatly divided into four stations: a dishwashing sink, a waiter station, a cold counter for salads and pastry prep, and a cooking area. Every available inch is used as improvisational storage. The ice machine fits snugly under the stairs. A refrigerated filing cabinet’s drawers are filled with lentils, ham hocks, and other ingredients. Spices are stacked in a milk crate. The space is so densely packed, it enforces a certain collegiality. “You can’t allow yourself the luxury of acting out or freaking out at anyone,” Alevras says, “because then there’s nowhere to storm off to. You’re stuck standing next to them for the next six hours.”

One of the most impressive feats of spatial economy is upstairs on the main floor--what Alevras calls the “wine attic.” The 46-inch-high temperature-controlled space is accessed up a ladder and through a hatch door. It holds a staggering 3,000 bottles stacked in a grid and “catalogued like Battleship,” says Alevras. If, for example, he were looking for a zinfandel from the Shenandoah Valley, he’d find it on row G3, column 05.

Although he’s made the most of the kitchen’s tiny footprint, Alevras still goes stir crazy. “Someday we’d like a full-sized small restaurant,” he says. Until then, his crew has to contend with this former butcher shop-turned-cash register dealership-turned-crack house. When he simply can’t take it anymore, Alevras reorganizes the kitchen, something he’s confessed to doing at least five times already. “I can’t make this place any bigger,” he says. “But I can rearrange it.”

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