12/28/2023 0 Comments Restaurant short menu“At Audrey, we like to be even vaguer to trigger some curiosity,” says Brock. At his high-end restaurant, Audrey, some descriptions are ambiguous: “A Study of Citrus” describes a dessert made with wekiwa, grapefruit, and mandarin (those ingredients are included on the menu, although unfamiliar diners will have to ask or Google to learn that wekiwa is a variety of tangelo). “ changed the whole thing around, but I still like to keep it short.”īrock agrees. But “with Instagram, it almost doesn’t matter because people have seen everything on social media,” he says. Redzepi says he aims to provide enough information for diners to understand what the main ingredients are, while leaving some room to surprise. To sell an item, this style of menu relies on the diner’s blind trust in the restaurant’s chef and the persuasive power of the front-of-house staff to tell the story of a dish, making it an especially popular choice in fine dining. They no longer want to be so passive when facing a menu.” “People built a deeper relationship with food during the pandemic. While the descriptive menus of the late 20th century aimed to give guests all the information they would need to feel in charge of their personal dining experience, the businesses that chose to eschew descriptions put more control in the chef’s hands. “ Ensemble was the first to really start changing the traditional format,” says chef René Redzepi, who has kept menus “sharp and precise” at his Copenhagen restaurant Noma over the course of its nearly 20 years in operation. “Although I have always enjoyed keeping the descriptions simple, I feel it’s important to give props to the producers, so we save that space for them,” he says.Ībout 10 years ago, influenced primarily by a Nordic minimalism movement, many restaurants opted for concise menus that listed just three or four ingredients instead of a more intricate description. Chef Sean Brock writes his menus only after figuring out what products he will have on hand to work with. Including information about ingredient sourcing, of course, has long been popular. The chef realizes that you may make decisions about what to eat based on that information.” The chef wants you to know where he’s getting the chicken, how the veal was raised. Former New York Times food critic Frank Bruni noted in 2007 that in the late 2000s, menu descriptions changed for a more “ethical purpose. But eventually, including details of cooking methods, cuts, and techniques fell out of fashion in favor of other kinds of dish details. The sauce is added at the last moment,” reads part of the description printed in Menu Design in America by John Mariani and Steven Heller, a compilation of American restaurant menus since 1847. “The breast of the chicken is cubed, seasoned, and swiftly sautéed in a mixture of oil and white egg. Chow’s described its Beijing Chicken in four lines. In the 1980s, LA-based Chinese restaurant Mr. For a long stretch predating the minimalist trend, they were marked by the need to convey all that the chefs accomplished in their kitchens. Menus represent the changing values of the restaurant industry. “Now that print menus are slowly coming back, restaurants are more willing to provide longer descriptions, which also helps them lure diners,” says Guillermo Ramirez, creative director of the Miami-based marketing agency Gluttonomy Inc. Thanks to the realities of post-pandemic restaurant operations - smaller staff among them - more restaurants are reverting back to full descriptors, with long, double-barreled lists of details about provenance, sauces, cooking methods, and sides. The minimalist menu trend replaced the descriptions and information that may have previously accompanied the names of dishes - details like preparation - with austere, spartan lines that are simply lists of ingredients.īut just as that information once did, the minimalist menu is disappearing. You point to four options that you believe are the right ones, and then wait and pray that the dishes that arrive will be even vaguely in the realm of what you expected. Noticing your hesitation, the waiter approaches and explains in detail each dish’s preparation before giving you a look that suggests that now is the time to make a decision. There are no distinctions between starters and main courses, and you may assume the last item is a dessert because you read “strawberry, asparagus, and nuts.” But you don’t really know because those three words are the only description. “We suggest four to five,” he says, smiling. There are around a dozen dishes, which can be ordered as a tasting menu or a la carte. It’s a familiar scene: After sitting down at a table, the waiter brings you a sheet of fancy paper with the day’s menu printed in pretty fonts.
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