Size, it turns out, is wildly overrated. MSN reports that a tiny all-day cafe in Raleigh, North Carolina has been named one of the hottest restaurants in America, and the place measures all of 800 square feet. That's smaller than most apartment living rooms I've cooked in. And it's pulling national attention anyway.

This is the kind of story I love, because it confirms a theory I've been carrying around for years: I'd trust a tiny menu over a long one any day, and I'd trust a tiny restaurant over a sprawling one too. A kitchen working in 800 square feet doesn't have room for a scattergun concept or a menu with 60 items and frozen backstock. Everything has to earn its footprint, every piece of equipment, every seat, every dish on the board. When space is that tight, the only things that survive are the things that matter.

All-day cafes are quietly one of the hardest formats to run well, too. You're doing breakfast, lunch, and usually dinner out of the same small kitchen, sometimes with the same crew, and the menu has to flex from morning pastry-and-coffee energy to actual plates people will drive across town for. Most places fumble at least one of the dayparts, in my experience. The ones that nail all three become the glue of a neighborhood, the spot where the laptop crowd at 9 a.m. and the date-night crowd at 8 p.m. are somehow in the same room and both happy.

And Raleigh is a fitting place for this to happen. North Carolina's food scene has been on a serious run lately, and I wrote recently about how some of the state's best restaurants keep their menus tiny on purpose. There's a whole philosophy emerging there, whether chefs are naming it or not: do fewer things, do them properly, and let the room stay small enough that you can see the food being made. An 800-square-foot cafe winning national recognition is just the loudest version of that idea so far.

I've eaten in enough closet-sized places around the world to know the drill. Some of the best noodles I've ever had came from a stall where I could touch both walls at once. Smallness creates a focus that big restaurants spend fortunes trying to fake with open kitchens and chef's counters. When the whole operation is basically one room, there's nowhere to hide, and the food either speaks for itself or the place quietly closes. This one, clearly, is speaking.

If you're anywhere near the Triangle, this goes on the list. Go early or expect to wait, because national press plus 800 square feet does the math for you. And do what I always tell people to do at a small spot: ask what they'd order. The staff at a place this size has tasted everything, watched what regulars come back for, and will give you a straight answer faster than any review section will.

Small room, short menu, big reputation. It keeps working.