The gripes of wrath

‘SMALL plates.” Mutant pizza. Dumb sommeliers.

Will restaurants never learn?

We haven’t ranted about petty dining-out nuisances in a while, because the not-so-petty ones must take priority — like fame-craving chefs fleeing their kitchens, and the utter abandonment of culinary creativity in favor of “branding.”

But the past month saw a critical density of lesser horrors emerge, some so prevalent as to unite even normally discordant critics. Chief among them:

THINK SMALL. Imagine owners sitting around saying, “Let’s see, how can we make more money? Let’s get rid of appetizers and entrees and fill the menu up with tons of ‘small plates.’ ”

“Brilliant!” interjects the owner’s weasel consultant. “Plus, have waiters tell people to order four or five small plates when they won’t be able to finish three.”

“Gadzooks!” the chef jumps in. “Tell customers the dishes will come in whatever order they’re ready. I don’t have to train my cooks to pace — they can send stuff out whenever, and I can spend more time on TV and in Vegas!”

Take Faustina in the Cooper Square Hotel — please. Scott Conant, pilot of Scarpetta and other fine adult places before that, went “small” with disastrous results — rotten reviews from local critics, most of whom liked the food but were finally fed up with the infantile shtick.

PIZZA HYSTERIA. New-wave joints like Keste and Motorino make you feel guilty for not loving weird pies “authentic” to some obscure corner of Naples. (When I was there, the pizza was generally not so different from Ray’s, with slightly better cheese and none of the dough-mutation stunts that are the rage here.)

And now, we have celebrity pizza chefs like Nate Appleman at Pulino’s. Page Six reported last week that cops busted him for carrying a knife on the street. But if he deserves punishment, it’s for a pie topped with potato and cabbage. Runner-up offenses include Motorino’s winter pie with Brussels sprouts — and a goofy, smoked salmon effort at The Mark by Jean-Georges.

There’s a reason the best pizza sticks with tomato sauce, cheese, olive oil, herbs and other traditional toppings. It’s the same reason why peanut butter and grape jelly whips peanut butter and tangerine marmalade: It tastes better.

MOLECULAR CUISINE, MANHATTAN-STYLE. They’re “sfizi” at Convivio, “snacks” at the Breslin, “nibbles” at Choptank — all cheap, tiny items meant to be consumed before appetizers. Often salty enough to make you drink until you can’t see, they bloat you prematurely and ruin your palate for the rest of the meal.

BOTTOM OF THE MINE. The chef knows so much better than you how a dish should be seasoned. So let’s say there’s no salt on the table. Beg for some in a plaintive, self-critical tone and the waiter humors you with a sneer, vouchsafing a mound of coarse sodium chloride in a tiny bowl with a tiny silver spoon. Once a shtick of high-end places, it now turns up all over the map — I even saw it at a Stone Street “tapas” joint that’s basically a bar and grill. Guys: Save your coke-and-disco fantasy for your private lives.

A TASTE OF HELL. You can get through a divorce sooner than you can some chefs’ zillion-course ego trips — known as the tasting menu. There’s almost always at least one interminable lag between items even at the most rarefied establishments — I once suffered through a 45-minute wait for the lamb course at Guy Savoy in Paris.

They seemed on the wane here after the crash of 2008. But now, up pops the eight-course number at Colicchio & Sons. Sure, it’s good, and this kitchen, unlike most, is able to serve it sans agonizing delays.

But the restaurant’s rowdy, steakhouse ambience isn’t suited to the contemplation a meal so complex wants. (Because a tasting must usually be ordered by everyone at the table, each dish demands discussion and debate.)

A recent (and wonderful) dinner for four at Eleven Madison Park took nearly four hours — with the standard, three-course prix-fixe. Had we ordered Daniel Humm’s 11-course tasting, we’d still be waiting for coffee. And who really wants a tasting menu at the new Aureole, a place with an office building-lobby air even in its “formal” dining room?

SPRING’S FALSE PROMISE. Most “spring” menus are cruel teases. The good stuff we really want, like local peas and asparagus, doesn’t turn up for at least another month. So impatient chefs smother us in ramps, the garlicky, leek-like wild onions that come out of the ground in March. They’re supposed to presage the glorious bounty to come. Instead, they remind us of winter’s bottomless pit of turnips and rutabaga. I’d rather eat wild grass on the High Line.

THE E-WORD. Worse than untrained waiters are those trained badly. Instead of letting you eat in peace, they torture you with the E-word at diabolically timed intervals. As in, “Are you enjoying your tripe?” “Are you still enjoying?” “Did you enjoy your pig’s foot?” Some up the asinine ante with, “Is it to your liking?”

Does anybody talk that way in real life? They’ve tried bringing sense to David Chang’s new Ma Peche — the training manual advises employees, “Do not say ‘enjoy’ after everything. Also, never say, ‘Are you done enjoying that?’ ” It’s a start. Every place should try it. But how about a free meal for every customer who turns the e-ffender in to management, with the tab coming out of the waiter’s tips?

SOUR GRAPES. The wines in your price range are unfamiliar. You want to know whether a certain pinot noir makes sense with halibut and jalapeño, or whether a Sangiovese-dominated blend from Napa resembles a Tuscan one.

Instead, the green sommelier reels off jargon out of a two-hour Learning Annex class — “fruit-

forward,” “Old World-style,” “moderate tannins” — rather than share any hint of what the wine might actually taste like or compare with. I prefer the rare sommelier brave enough to acknowledge, “I haven’t tried it yet.”

scuozzo@nypost.com