El Quinto Pino, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, is the world’s smallest restaurant. Nearly a perfect cube, its 400 square feet encompass both a full kitchen and bar dining. The dining area becomes a proscenium where everyone is onstage. The essentially social act of dining is amplified by the compressed space, the verticality of the ceiling height, multiple large mirrors, an elegant curved bar, and over scaled and dramatic light fixtures. These theatrical gestures enlarge and give grandeur to a tiny space. The demarcation between front and back of stage is further magnified by a wall of reclaimed 19th century encaustic tiles. The kitchen and dining areas function as two essential halves of a single whole, each indispensable to the dining experience.