The most obvious trick is that there is always at least one crazy priced dish on the menu that almost nobody ever orders but it is placed there so that in comparison everything else looks like a great deal.
Some of the best restaurants are the ones that are hopelessly bad at this kind of marketing and instead get by with great cooking. Small towns sometimes have these gems hiding away if you can find them.
In fact people i know and myself see not using these tricks as a stronger signal of good food. After all the restaurant is going all in on their food instead of any tricks for the items on their menu.
I always joked that my parents' restaurant was authentic due to the spelling errors on the menu.
I think it's actually for some truth to it, and perhaps Berksons paradox is the explanation. If you either make good food or market well, and there's selection based on a frontier of a mix of the two, you end up creating a correlation even where none existed in the underlying set. So places with crap marketing that survive are likely to be doing so because the food makes up for it.
See every cheap (but tremendously tasty) mexican food taco truck or stand!
I personally have noticed an "uncanny valley" of restaurants, where I'd much rather eat cheaply (see Chick-fil-a, taco trucks, local pizza shops, or a lot of Asian spots) or expensively (locally renowned restaurants) and ignore most everything in between. It's hard to pay 25 dollars for an meal when it's going to be good but nothing special, when you could pay ~15 for something you'd enjoy just as much. The higher end resturants provide the "novel" experiences and flavors that make spending $35+ worth it.
I went to Ontario (California) for a consult gig. My host asked what I wanted for dinner and I suggested tacos. So he took me to some mall, with the fanciest Mexican resturant I've ever seen -- and all these really cool looking people in the outdoor seating, with fancy drinks. I said: "Ali, fuck this place. let me try" -- then we poped to this place: Fredy's Tacos (https://www.yelp.com/biz/fredys-tacos-restaurant-ontario). My guy was a little nervous to get in there. Tacos == BOMB!; Tortas == AMAZING!!! And the beers (Pacifico) were in a cooler outside the counter area, so when I said "un otro" the cook (Fredy?) just pointed like "get it yourself". `11/10 experience, muy authentico
>I went to Ontario (California) for a consult gig.
When I was forced to travel for work now and again, my instincts were always to find a bar with a decent food menu. It's usually as good (better?) plus it was easier to buy a properly sized meal without all the extra filler.
Also, extra bonus points for things that are a hassle to make at home (typically sushi). Restaurants lose their sparkle as you age. The Sysco truck goes to practically all of them anyway.
There's something to be said for the super old school diners (typically Mexican restaurants in the places I grew up in), but those are towns that scarcely any HN readers would have wandered into.
> when I said "un otro" just pointed like "get it yourself"
I can understand why. Next time don't use that, is incorrect (would translate as a strange "an, other"). The correct way would be either just "otra" (another) or "una más" (one more), generally followed by a casual "por favor". Take in mind that beer is feminine in spanish so you have to use "otra" (not "otro").
Many other alcoholic drinks are masculine, but are often served in a coup or bottle, that are feminine nouns. You can ask for "otro vino" or "un vino" but "una copa de vino" (a glass of wine) is also common. To use "un más" instead the correct "uno más" (one more) would be also a common mistake.
gracias por la ayuda! (and forgive spelling). Spanish is not my first language, I learned by ear only -- and I cannot spell (english or spanish) well -- so while I wrote "un otro" in text, I'm pretty sure I've been pronouncing "otra" this whole time (even when I should have used the masculine) -- and I put "por favor" on everything (when speaking) -- Fredy likey heard "un otra por favor" from me -- and I was just enjoying a place that was as casual/comfortable/delicious as places a little further south (all while watching my more up-scale compantion squirm a little).
I've lived in a very expensive city and a medium cost of living city in the US and the lower quality of restaurants is the biggest difference for me.
There are some very famous and very expensive restaurants, but even those places have been disappointing too frequently. It's often something really basic like the food being too salty.
This wasn't as much of a problem in the very expensive city. It's unlikely that my taste buds have gotten more sensitive because I lived in the more expensive city at a younger age and taste buds get less sensitive as you get older to my knowledge.
Almost every attempt at finding a small town gem has not really worked out for me in the US.
In countries like France, I know that I can find small town gems just by checking the Michelin guide. I can go to Vonnas (population 3000) and find a great restaurant just by checking the Michelin guide. I would love to do that in the US.
In the US, it's probably most likely to be regional food. Like I've had good Southwestern food in smaller places in New Mexico. On the other hand, not really middle of nowhere small. In my experience, the pickings are pretty slim in most small towns.
If you're staying in a B&B, the host will often have a list of recommended places. Yes, reviews are hit and miss, although still better than nothing. You do have to sort through a lot. I live in a small town and the pickings in general are slim. But, there's a good restaurant (yes, attached to a winery) maybe 20 minutes down the road.
Cant tell you how to find em but one that sticks in memory is in Phoenix, Az, me and the wife found this by accident, it was so good we came back a couple of time during our stay in Phoenix.
Often the local subreddit is a great place to look. Also, old trip advisor Q&A threads if it is moderately touristy. (But not reviews)
I really like the Eater guide. Especially their posts where it is popular local chefs talking about their favorite restaurants. These posts aren't usually highlighted to you have to go digging a bit to find it.
Local youtubers are also great resources, if you know how to find them. The fewer subscribers the better.
Yelp can work sometimes. Yelp's top restaurants are usually 'mass appeal' places. If there is a top rated restaurant that looks totally out of place, it is very likely a local gem.
If nothing works then go for the classic combination: "Locally owned - Long queue - Fast service"
Special green-flags:
- Ethnic restaurant has more ethnic people than white people.
- Asian restaurant only has photos and no English menu
- Indian restaurant is full + a 3 star rating on Yelp
- Ethnic restaurant does not have the name of the home country or cuisine in it.
- American restaurant that's open for only half the day, or till supplies last
Small (usually ethnic) places run by one chef or one family and not in the city centre are where I find the best food in my town in New Zealand (400,000). They also tend to be amazingly good value (or perhaps I optimise for that too?) But I am not sure how you could find them as a stranger to town.
As a generalisation, I have found that high quality restaurants occur in towns where there is the demand for them. This requires that there is a significant population of customers who eat out enough, pay enough, and are discerning enough to keep restaurants up to standard.
My town (Christchurch) doesn’t really have the culture, so the quality of the majority of places isn’t great. Wellington has a similar population but it has much better restaurants (including in the city centre), because the demographics of Wellington tends towards more disposable income and more foodie culture, so the people that go out often really know what tastes good.
The other significant issue with New Zealand is that the majority of restaurants are delivered their produce and food by restaurant supplier companies; food which often is no better than what you may get at the supermarket. You can really notice the difference when you eat home grown veges or home kill meat - some of the most memorable meals I have had have been simple ones at people’s homes. There needs to be a food culture to care about taste enough for restaurants to seek out better tasting food ingredients.
Take care when asking locals for advice, including young people working in hospo. They are often not foodies so they don’t suggest something that is any good... instead they might mention a new place or a popular place (or even worse, a tourist place).
I've been saying this for years. Forget "organic" or "free-range" or "local", all of which can still be arranged via Sysco. But if a restaurant advertised "Sysco-free", that would be highly appealing.
That actually seems useful. Not dividing by gender, but instead the idea of giving a different menu to the person who's paying and the one(s) who are being treated. It's tough placing an order when you're being taken out to dinner and can see the prices because you're going to avoid something you might really want if it's more expensive than the average of the menu.
I think that would be very hard in practice without prior arrangement. The restaurant has no way of knowing the circumstances of the dinner and the person doing the paying. Getting the most expensive thing on the menu may be a stretch for the host or it may of no consequence. (And the server won't even know if you're splitting the bill.)
If it's a place you're going to on a reservation you can work that out ahead of time. It wouldn't be something that would be the default at restaurants, but it's not impossible.
I believe it's still common practice at private clubs, though i haven't been to one in a while. Menu with prices for the member, without prices for the guests.
>Very modern, possibly posh, certainly arrogant in its branding (really off-putting when used by a coffee joint or pastry shop).
Why? For me, I'd just assume what ever the local currency was is implied. Maybe that's just me being in the US, so there's only $. However, when I've been to other non-european countries, this was also a safe assumption. However, even in Europe, would it not be safe to assume euros, unless in the UK, then assume pounds? Am I just being too simple?
This is less about the practicalities of "what currency are they charging me?", which is rarely if ever a legitimate concern of a customer. This relates more to the presentation of the menu itself, where excluding the dollar sign is something posh restaurants do, and many others imitate. As for why they do so, I don't know of a reason beyond the appeal of minimalism
Even when the currency sign is dropped, you would usually have a notation like 12.—, 12.--, or 12.00 (or with commas instead of periods as decimal separator depending on locale) to signify that it is a price and not just a random number. You could easily guess that from the context, but it is a deliberate circumvention of convention nonetheless. Using just '12' also signals that fractional units of that currency are not something that establishment deals with (which is fine for Japanese Yen or South Korean Won, but comes across as rude for Euro, and most Dollars and Pounds).
> Using just '12' also signals that fractional units of that currency are not something that establishment deals with (which is fine for Japanese Yen or South Korean Won, but comes across as rude for Euro, and most Dollars and Pounds).
Pedantic note: you will routinely see prices specified as “12” on menus in coffeeshops and restaurants in Korea, and it would mean 12000 won.
I personally treat it as just one of the tactics a place employs to set expectations and attract/repel audience according to its preferred vibe.
I think there is a bell curve happening here. Very very cheap restaurants will have simple menus written on paper (and possibly laminated).
Middle tier, chain restaurants (like the cheescake factory) will have heavy menus with elaborate food descriptions and departments of people who work on optimizing them.
But then at the very high end, it actually wraps back around. The nicest restaurants I've been to will often have a paper menu, with a very, very small selection of things on it.
My personal opinion is that some of these things are actually a counter-indicator. If you obviously put a lot of thought into your menu, bought an obnoxious folder for it, have lavish descriptions, etc. it's because you are leaning into the perception of your food/atmosphere, rather than the reality of it.
Agreed. One of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten at had a single 8.5x11 slip of paper for the main menu (and a weighty tome for the wine menu).
Another place we never even got a menu - the food just started appearing, much to our confusion! Apparently it was a prix fixe multi-course meal arrangement, and you get whatever you get - the server had assumed we knew. The food was fabulous, but it took three hours longer than we had planned to spend.
Places like this ask about your dietary restrictions during either the reservation or before the beginning of service. The chef will make on the fly adjustments based on each diner's needs.
My brother and I went to Eleven Madison Park back in 2016 and mentioned my allergies ahead of time. Not only did they plan alternatives for me, they even included them in the printed out menu that they give to each diner as they leave as a memento of the meal.
Normally, I would assume it would be at least written on a blackboard somewhere. That said, outside of the US, my sense is that there's less attention paid to food allergy concerns so, if you have anything of note, it's mostly on you to be pro-active and careful.
"All hospitality establishments in Europe are now required to declare ingredients contained in their foods that may induce allergies or food intolerances."
Certainly not true in Italy - as a person who eats gluten free, it was an order of magnitude easier to find alternative options in many cities in Italy than it is in San Francisco.
As L_Rahman said, typically you register your allergies with your reservation.
That said, it's entirely possible they're unable/unwilling to accommodate every allergy and/or preference. There are well regarded restaurants near me that only do prix fixe tasting menus that I don't dine at as I know based on what they tend to serve that the likelihood of me being served things I won't want is high, and at that price point it's not worth it to me.
I have a fairly mild case of Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), and I wound up at one of these places with co-workers in San Francisco one time. This is basically a nightmare scenario for me. I'm socially expected to eat, and I'm presented with strange dishes and lots of unwanted attention when I inevitably don't eat.
But we spoke with the server, and she found me a dish from the prix fixe arrangement that I could eat, and spent the night just making sure there was always some of that dish on the table.
Everything went better than expected. Sure, I don't have to be worried about death from being exposed to food I won't eat, but I could've called ahead, and would've, if the stakes were that high.
I guess all that's to say: good restaurants are pretty accommodating, even when they aren't doing the normal menu thing. It's really not that crazy.
> I'm socially expected to eat, and I'm presented with strange dishes and lots of unwanted attention when I inevitably don't eat.
I'm a very similar way as you wrt food, but not the social pressure part. I don't like eating in professional settings (eating is messy, for one), so I will usually eat alone beforehand and then only order something very small and light (or even just beverages) at the meeting meal. The social pressure thing I find to be easily deflected.
Same goes at bar/drinking events. I don't like drinking alcohol but everyone seems to report perceived pressure to drink alcohol at such things. I haven't found drinking nonalcoholic things to be the big hassle others claim it to be.
I think people build up the expectations more than they actually are in reality. Most other people don't really care that much what you're eating or drinking, if they are eating or drinking what they like.
It really depends on the culture. If you’re invited to meals and you consistently don’t eat, you will just stop getting invited (unless they are formal meetings).
WRT drinking, it can take a lot longer to build trust without the shared alcohol experiences. You’re correct that there isn’t direct social pressure, but you end up getting left out of “after-event” drinks as well.
I noticed these things when I had to go on a strict diet with no alcohol for about a year. You might argue that nothing important happens during non-formal events, but that’s a big mistake.
You should try fine dining, if you like food and eating. It's a really fun and interesting way to spend an evening. Kind of surreal, especially the first time around.
You don't have to spend $250, although you probably have to spend $125 (based on my experiences in Europe).
I don't think of it as "a meal", at all, eating a meal usually doesn't take me three hours. It's more in the category of an event like a concert or the opera or a theme park visit.
And similar to the French Laundry menu, there are many indicators that a lot of thought has been placed into this menu and is thus a high end restaurant. You can see many of the techniques mentioned in the article: removing the money symbol, groupings of 3-6 items, use of long and fancy words for the dish names (in lieu of subtitle description). The font choices and layout are also clear indicators.
If you're ever in London I'd definitely recommend it, interesting history, it's a private members club now (the restaurant is open to public bookings though) and the building has a storied history, being a brothel and the one time abode of Karl Marx at certain points.
That's a good point about paper menus wrapping around to the high end. Another thing to note would be the difference between the paper menus. At the low end, you have thin and flimsy paper being used, possibly tri-folded as they are also take-out menus, with low quality printing and little attention paid to graphic design or fonts. Food descriptions are likely to be nothing more than a common name for the dish (e.g. fish and chips, pad thai noodles). At the other end, there's no way to tell what paper is used for the French Laundry menu, but maybe it's bone or eggshell in a tasteful thickness. The font, design, and especially the wording (utilizing many of the techniques listed in the article) all indicate that a lot of thought has been put into the menu and thus is a high end restaurant.
That seems a bit too simplistic. How much bigger is the 18 portion size compared to 10? Are you getting the same dish, just scaled up, or is it a different dish?
Most good restaurants I’ve been to don’t actually have a menu you choose from - you get what’s seasonal and what the kitchen has planned for. The only real inputs are how much you are going to eat and how drunk you want to be at the end of it.
I’ve been to one restaurant in the lower price range that also adopted this concept, though with a twist. There’s not really a menu to choose from, you get what you get, but the waiter will update the blackboard with “what you get if you order now”.
The reason I prefer this is because it tends to focus on what’s seasonal and what is the chef good at.
My favorite chef in New Orleans releases the menu online each day for the upcoming evening (sometimes the day before) but you don't see the prices until you get there and the dishes are first come first serve (he makes a fixed amount)
This reminds me of the time I went looking for a Somali restaurant in Minneapolis (this was 2007 or so, right when the Grindhouse double feature had been released)
I finally found a place and poked my head in. A bunch of old bearded Somali men in skullcaps all turned and stared at me and Al Jazeera was on in the corner.
No menu was visible so I approached the counter and asked the man behind it what was for lunch. He responded, “Goat.”
One of my favorite places just had a chalk board. They would erase dishes when they ran out of ingredients, and add ones when their driver would come back with groceries
I don't know--that French Laundry menu feels pretentious to me too. For example, many, many items in the description have unnecessary modifiers. If going for simplicity, they wouldn't be telling me it is "Maine" lobster tail, "French Laundry garden" cabbage, "Sacramento Delta" asparagus, "King Richard" leeks, etc. All of that is selling people on the idea it is quality, not simply trusting that the result speaks for itself. If I trust their reputation, I should be able to trust they select a good lobster tail, cabbage, asparagus and leek without them trying to sell it to me. Those sorts of extra food descriptions put me off (in the same way that similar modifiers in a, for example, Blue Apron ad do...)
And throwing in unnecessary french words is just as off putting to my sensibilities (but can be forgiven, given their name). So is omitting dollar signs. Or unnecessary italics. I could go on. My point is they absolutely are trying to put out a perception of quality food/atmosphere with their menu design, just in a different way and with fewer items than they Cheesecake Factory version. They're just doing the humble brag version of the same thing.
It’s like any other trend. Elaborate french menus were en vogue in the 80s and 90s, eventually the style trickled down to places like Cheesecake Factory, and once they’re doing it it’s not cool any more.
As chains adopt the simple and local style the high end will move on to something else.
Yes, but gradually. E.g. the change from fine dining to more casual fine dining (even the officially non-casual fine dining became more casual and less stuffy). Since the 80s, complexity and affinity to exotics also went down, local and sustainable became trends. Insects and hay are extreme indicators of that. Around 20 years ago, vegetarian dining also became a (still rare) option. 10 years ago there was a short hype around molecular cuisine.
I think the big changes happen in terms of generations of chefs and guests, so around a 30year timeline. Caveat: everything is just my observation, no statistics or anything to prove it.
I don't disagree with you in principle, but the TFL menu specifically is kind of... a thing. It's explicitly stylized after an Escoffier-style menu (see e.g. http://ciadigitalcollections.culinary.edu/digital/collection... ), is instantly recognizable in the world of fine dining, and is actually often not given to the diner until after the meal (the menu is not what's getting anyone to eat at TFL -- you're making a reservation months in advance).
There's quite a bit of variation in lobster based on where it comes from though. Idk about the other stuff but lobster and seafood in general has lots of location specific nuance. Maine lobster is pretty much standard though so not really a selling point. A deepwater north Carolina lobster would be something premium.
I really hate the gratuitous adjective issue too but the ones you chose I wouldn't call inherently pretentious, except that they are exaggerations that don't add much (or any) value. There really is pretentious gibberish in that menu.
Maine (well New England) lobsters are different from langoustines which are often referred to as lobsters in English. Though personally when eating the tail I can't tell the difference. Perhaps I'm a philistine and some can. This is up there with the "Spanish" capers..I know you can tell the difference.
"French Laundry garden" cabbage..."grown in our garden" is good enough for me. "Sacramento Delta asparagus" ... not as good as Half Moon Bay? "local" would be fine.
A "King Richard" leeks actually is a specific breed of leek. Oh but wait, it's the plain old leek you'd find in any grocery store. Sure glad they let me know.
For true prevention let's switch to the nouns, shall we? It's OK to use a foreign word that has no, or only a distant, English relative. But "Streusel" is called "strudel" in English. The Saboyon doesn't exist in English but the French word is for a sweet dessert which I really doubt is used in an oyster dish. etc.
With all those adjectives someone should do a "truth in advertising" sting on those restaurants. It'd make great TV
German "Streusel" is just the crumbly dryish component covering a cake or pastry made from a little flour, butter and lots of sugar. Streuselkuchen is a cake made with yeast dough covered in Streusel. Optionally, one can enhance this with fruit or vegetables, e.g. rhubarb. But cheesecake, cheese pastry (with a flaky pastry base) or fruity pastry can also be covered with some Streuseln.
Strudel is a bigger (generous 1 portion or more) piece of pastry (usually puff pastry, but plain pastry dough is also not unusual) with fruit filling, commonly apples and raisins. Often served with vanilla sauce.
Of those, I've usually seen strudel to have the original German meaning while streusel in english is usually used to mean Streuselkuchen with fruit.
> grown in our garden" is good enough for me. "Sacramento Delta asparagus" ... not as good as Half Moon Bay? "local" would be fine.
But you’re eating at French laundry. The grow spot shouldn’t make any difference for a restaurant where A) they are supposed to prepare excellent dishes and B) you have so few choices.
“Well we finally got into French Laundry but decided to leave when we saw the menu and found they were serving garlic from Gilroy instead of garlic from Morgan Hill.”
Disagree. If I’m going to pay $600 for a meal, I want to be sold on what’s to come. Letting me know that things are special, rare, and detailed gives me a better idea of what’s to come and makes me more excited for it. If I saw very few words yet high price tag, it would be difficult to calibrate my expectations and even know what to get.
You don’t go to the French Laundry for a meal, you go for an experience.
Some restaurants think they're too good for traditional menus. I few years ago I went to Diner, one of the hippest Brooklyn spots at the time (one evening, Bill Murray was hanging out there, pretending a slice of lime was his teeth). They refused to have a paper menu. Instead, the waiter would verbally tell you about all 15 or so items, while casually scribbling each item in shorthand on the paper tablecloth. After they'd gone, you'd have forgotten most of the things they had mentioned, so you'd try to decipher the scribbles that the waiter had left. It was pretty silly and frustrating (and the food was merely adequate).
This is a direct imitation of a restaurant I visited in Europe (I think Rome) - but the menu items were “simple”, all had pasta and there was a meat, seafood, and no meat. Different each day but really only three or so. Quite good and didn’t feel pretentious at all - more like visiting the chef at home and getting to partake in the family meal.
A relatively famous restaurant in Italy doesn’t have any menus beyond a few hand-written pieces of scrap paper (which customers often try to pilfer instead of returning - we dined late and since we were the last to order we got to keep them).
Very high end restaurants have a daily menu which changes daily and often a seasonal taster menu which changes with the season and often even micro changes each week as the produce is slightly different which the chef was able to buy from his suppliers and markets.
"The more description you have the higher the value of the item and the lower the price seems in the customer's head"
I'm not sure having longer descriptions is so much a trick as it lets the customer buy with more confidence. The customer knows they are getting what they want, and when they get it, they know what to expect.
It's more like saying if you have a two great dishes and one has 5 ingredients but the other has 7 ingredients, you'll be able to charge more for the one with 7 ingredients because the customer feels like they're getting more bang for their buck.
Was the rule meant to, for example, help your boss lose weight? Hopefully it wasn't a rule that he/she thought meant better food. Ruling out restaurants with pictures of the food would zap quite a lot of my favorite places across my lifetime.
In most of the US, “pictures of food on the menu” is associated with low-end but highly marketed national chains that serve large amounts of unexceptional food - Applebees, Cheesecake Factory, etc.
Your boss arbitrarily ruled out entire categories of food. All of the best Chinese and Malaysian restaurants, for example, will have pictures. It's just how they do it.
Menu design is a great candidate for psychology experiments. It's easy to do A/B testing by giving different menus to different tables at the same time. The end goal is money spent or items sold, which is a simple number you'll always know exactly.
However, you have to be careful to not overreach in inferring why people do things:
>“The dollar sign is a pain point that reminds the diner that they are spending money,” says Allen. “By just using the figure, or even better, writing it out in words, it can reduce that pain.”
This sounds like a rationalization. It could be true. But if I were a menu designer, I wouldn't try to use it to predict anything beyond including currency symbols.
My personal experience with these menus is that, by excluding the dollar sign, writing the price out in words and misaligning the decimal point, I am unable to calculate the final cost of my meal without taking out my phone. In my case, that's how these menus reduce the pain.
The article appears to misrepresent the result of a study it links to. From the article:
> A study conducted by researchers in Switzerland found that a wine labelled with a difficult-to-read script was liked more by drinkers than the same wine carrying a simpler typeface.
> Fluency was manipulated via an easy- or difficult-to-read font. Results showed that there was no effect of the consumption domain. However, the wine was liked more in the high-fluency condition compared to the low-fluency condition. Thus, the results indicate that a wine tastes better if the labeled visual information can be processed relatively fluently.
I have in the past complained about bugs like this to a cousin of mine who works for the BBC. The response? "Hell, we're the press; what do you expect?"
(At one point we discussed it in person and she said that she actually thinks the BBC standards are pretty high, but that's merely relatively high in an industry where the standards are low. I suppose the years have made her cynical).
Is it a “trick” to use “grass-fed Angus steak with thick-cut rosemary fries“ rather than just say “steak and chips”, as the article claims? I don’t think so. The former is a more detailed description of what’s being offered. The latter refers to a much simpler meal.
The only really "scientific" stuff, seems to be the ability to crunch numbers, and calibrate the effect of menu design.
Otherwise, the language used, looks a lot like what I see with fashion, or graphic design. A lot of associating emotional responses with design elements.
The issue with that, is that a lot of these cues depend on societal culture. As in any craft, the designer needs to have a fairly good handle on their target audience.
What I have come to absolutely loathe, have been the "QR code" menus that so many restaurants have adopted; citing COVID caution.
I have gotten up and walked out of a couple of restaurants, because they insisted that I use my phone to scan a QR code on the table, and the phone's screen is immediately dominated by a massive advertisement or branding wank, and I need to scroll down to see the first items (which are often simple PDF scans of their printed menus -scans, not saved as PDF).
I have not been to the restaurant yet since COVID, but I dislike that too (for one thing, I don't have a cell phone). I think that they should use a slow updating display with the menu where anyone can see (and photograph, if they have a camera and want a copy). It may also help if you can purchase a printed copy of the menu.
> “Naming the farmer who grew the vegetables or the breed of a pig can help to add authenticity to a product,” says Spence. “Consumers take that as a sign of quality, even it has been made up.”
That's an interesting use of the world authenticity.
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[ 9.4 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadI think it's actually for some truth to it, and perhaps Berksons paradox is the explanation. If you either make good food or market well, and there's selection based on a frontier of a mix of the two, you end up creating a correlation even where none existed in the underlying set. So places with crap marketing that survive are likely to be doing so because the food makes up for it.
I personally have noticed an "uncanny valley" of restaurants, where I'd much rather eat cheaply (see Chick-fil-a, taco trucks, local pizza shops, or a lot of Asian spots) or expensively (locally renowned restaurants) and ignore most everything in between. It's hard to pay 25 dollars for an meal when it's going to be good but nothing special, when you could pay ~15 for something you'd enjoy just as much. The higher end resturants provide the "novel" experiences and flavors that make spending $35+ worth it.
"I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second."
When I was forced to travel for work now and again, my instincts were always to find a bar with a decent food menu. It's usually as good (better?) plus it was easier to buy a properly sized meal without all the extra filler.
Also, extra bonus points for things that are a hassle to make at home (typically sushi). Restaurants lose their sparkle as you age. The Sysco truck goes to practically all of them anyway.
There's something to be said for the super old school diners (typically Mexican restaurants in the places I grew up in), but those are towns that scarcely any HN readers would have wandered into.
I can understand why. Next time don't use that, is incorrect (would translate as a strange "an, other"). The correct way would be either just "otra" (another) or "una más" (one more), generally followed by a casual "por favor". Take in mind that beer is feminine in spanish so you have to use "otra" (not "otro").
Many other alcoholic drinks are masculine, but are often served in a coup or bottle, that are feminine nouns. You can ask for "otro vino" or "un vino" but "una copa de vino" (a glass of wine) is also common. To use "un más" instead the correct "uno más" (one more) would be also a common mistake.
https://goo.gl/maps/dDpAuAfpW41BANxS9
I've lived in a very expensive city and a medium cost of living city in the US and the lower quality of restaurants is the biggest difference for me.
There are some very famous and very expensive restaurants, but even those places have been disappointing too frequently. It's often something really basic like the food being too salty.
This wasn't as much of a problem in the very expensive city. It's unlikely that my taste buds have gotten more sensitive because I lived in the more expensive city at a younger age and taste buds get less sensitive as you get older to my knowledge.
Almost every attempt at finding a small town gem has not really worked out for me in the US.
In countries like France, I know that I can find small town gems just by checking the Michelin guide. I can go to Vonnas (population 3000) and find a great restaurant just by checking the Michelin guide. I would love to do that in the US.
Southwestern, tacos, Boreal, tagine, American, sandwiches, Polish, sushi, Tamil, no cuisine. It's all good to me.
Some farms and wineries have restaurants out here, but they don't have too many reviews so it's hard to tell if they're good or not.
http://www.lesanssoucirestaurant.com/
Often the local subreddit is a great place to look. Also, old trip advisor Q&A threads if it is moderately touristy. (But not reviews)
I really like the Eater guide. Especially their posts where it is popular local chefs talking about their favorite restaurants. These posts aren't usually highlighted to you have to go digging a bit to find it.
Local youtubers are also great resources, if you know how to find them. The fewer subscribers the better.
Yelp can work sometimes. Yelp's top restaurants are usually 'mass appeal' places. If there is a top rated restaurant that looks totally out of place, it is very likely a local gem.
If nothing works then go for the classic combination: "Locally owned - Long queue - Fast service"
Special green-flags:
- Ethnic restaurant has more ethnic people than white people.
- Asian restaurant only has photos and no English menu
- Indian restaurant is full + a 3 star rating on Yelp
- Ethnic restaurant does not have the name of the home country or cuisine in it.
- American restaurant that's open for only half the day, or till supplies last
As a generalisation, I have found that high quality restaurants occur in towns where there is the demand for them. This requires that there is a significant population of customers who eat out enough, pay enough, and are discerning enough to keep restaurants up to standard.
My town (Christchurch) doesn’t really have the culture, so the quality of the majority of places isn’t great. Wellington has a similar population but it has much better restaurants (including in the city centre), because the demographics of Wellington tends towards more disposable income and more foodie culture, so the people that go out often really know what tastes good.
The other significant issue with New Zealand is that the majority of restaurants are delivered their produce and food by restaurant supplier companies; food which often is no better than what you may get at the supermarket. You can really notice the difference when you eat home grown veges or home kill meat - some of the most memorable meals I have had have been simple ones at people’s homes. There needs to be a food culture to care about taste enough for restaurants to seek out better tasting food ingredients.
Take care when asking locals for advice, including young people working in hospo. They are often not foodies so they don’t suggest something that is any good... instead they might mention a new place or a popular place (or even worse, a tourist place).
Special bonus example for Europeans:
Restaurant owner asked his nephew to type out the menu or similar. Food could still be good though.Like this https://www.brooklynbarmenus.com/
I think it might be actually illegal to not have prices on menus
That was another time/age, but it was certainly legal.
Why? For me, I'd just assume what ever the local currency was is implied. Maybe that's just me being in the US, so there's only $. However, when I've been to other non-european countries, this was also a safe assumption. However, even in Europe, would it not be safe to assume euros, unless in the UK, then assume pounds? Am I just being too simple?
Pedantic note: you will routinely see prices specified as “12” on menus in coffeeshops and restaurants in Korea, and it would mean 12000 won.
I personally treat it as just one of the tactics a place employs to set expectations and attract/repel audience according to its preferred vibe.
Middle tier, chain restaurants (like the cheescake factory) will have heavy menus with elaborate food descriptions and departments of people who work on optimizing them.
But then at the very high end, it actually wraps back around. The nicest restaurants I've been to will often have a paper menu, with a very, very small selection of things on it.
My personal opinion is that some of these things are actually a counter-indicator. If you obviously put a lot of thought into your menu, bought an obnoxious folder for it, have lavish descriptions, etc. it's because you are leaning into the perception of your food/atmosphere, rather than the reality of it.
To make my point: here is the menu for the french laundry: https://portlandfoodanddrink.com/because-we-all-need-to-see-...
Another place we never even got a menu - the food just started appearing, much to our confusion! Apparently it was a prix fixe multi-course meal arrangement, and you get whatever you get - the server had assumed we knew. The food was fabulous, but it took three hours longer than we had planned to spend.
I find this unfathomable. What if you have allergies? I guess just don't eat there. But the server assumed you knew? Wild.
My brother and I went to Eleven Madison Park back in 2016 and mentioned my allergies ahead of time. Not only did they plan alternatives for me, they even included them in the printed out menu that they give to each diner as they leave as a memento of the meal.
"All hospitality establishments in Europe are now required to declare ingredients contained in their foods that may induce allergies or food intolerances."
https://www.wko.at/branchen/tourismus-freizeitwirtschaft/gas...
That said, it's entirely possible they're unable/unwilling to accommodate every allergy and/or preference. There are well regarded restaurants near me that only do prix fixe tasting menus that I don't dine at as I know based on what they tend to serve that the likelihood of me being served things I won't want is high, and at that price point it's not worth it to me.
But we spoke with the server, and she found me a dish from the prix fixe arrangement that I could eat, and spent the night just making sure there was always some of that dish on the table.
Everything went better than expected. Sure, I don't have to be worried about death from being exposed to food I won't eat, but I could've called ahead, and would've, if the stakes were that high.
I guess all that's to say: good restaurants are pretty accommodating, even when they aren't doing the normal menu thing. It's really not that crazy.
I'm a very similar way as you wrt food, but not the social pressure part. I don't like eating in professional settings (eating is messy, for one), so I will usually eat alone beforehand and then only order something very small and light (or even just beverages) at the meeting meal. The social pressure thing I find to be easily deflected.
Same goes at bar/drinking events. I don't like drinking alcohol but everyone seems to report perceived pressure to drink alcohol at such things. I haven't found drinking nonalcoholic things to be the big hassle others claim it to be.
I think people build up the expectations more than they actually are in reality. Most other people don't really care that much what you're eating or drinking, if they are eating or drinking what they like.
WRT drinking, it can take a lot longer to build trust without the shared alcohol experiences. You’re correct that there isn’t direct social pressure, but you end up getting left out of “after-event” drinks as well.
I noticed these things when I had to go on a strict diet with no alcohol for about a year. You might argue that nothing important happens during non-formal events, but that’s a big mistake.
Yes! Because [they are signalling that] they update it and print it each day.
According to what is available fresh, from the market, on that day.
Not just signaling. Probably 20-30% of tables do get personalized menus due to dietary restrictions or preferences.
https://www.exploretock.com/tfl/
You don't have to spend $250, although you probably have to spend $125 (based on my experiences in Europe).
I don't think of it as "a meal", at all, eating a meal usually doesn't take me three hours. It's more in the category of an event like a concert or the opera or a theme park visit.
Most good restaurants I’ve been to don’t actually have a menu you choose from - you get what’s seasonal and what the kitchen has planned for. The only real inputs are how much you are going to eat and how drunk you want to be at the end of it.
I’ve been to one restaurant in the lower price range that also adopted this concept, though with a twist. There’s not really a menu to choose from, you get what you get, but the waiter will update the blackboard with “what you get if you order now”.
The reason I prefer this is because it tends to focus on what’s seasonal and what is the chef good at.
I finally found a place and poked my head in. A bunch of old bearded Somali men in skullcaps all turned and stared at me and Al Jazeera was on in the corner.
No menu was visible so I approached the counter and asked the man behind it what was for lunch. He responded, “Goat.”
I replied, “Can you be more specific?”
He replied again “Goat.” but added “$8”
And throwing in unnecessary french words is just as off putting to my sensibilities (but can be forgiven, given their name). So is omitting dollar signs. Or unnecessary italics. I could go on. My point is they absolutely are trying to put out a perception of quality food/atmosphere with their menu design, just in a different way and with fewer items than they Cheesecake Factory version. They're just doing the humble brag version of the same thing.
It isn't good or bad, it's just the current fashion that dictates how things are done. 20 years in the future, this will have changed.
As chains adopt the simple and local style the high end will move on to something else.
I think the big changes happen in terms of generations of chefs and guests, so around a 30year timeline. Caveat: everything is just my observation, no statistics or anything to prove it.
Atlantic and Pacific (spiny) lobster (not really a lobster) are quite different though and it would otherwise be ambiguous.
Maine (well New England) lobsters are different from langoustines which are often referred to as lobsters in English. Though personally when eating the tail I can't tell the difference. Perhaps I'm a philistine and some can. This is up there with the "Spanish" capers..I know you can tell the difference.
"French Laundry garden" cabbage..."grown in our garden" is good enough for me. "Sacramento Delta asparagus" ... not as good as Half Moon Bay? "local" would be fine.
A "King Richard" leeks actually is a specific breed of leek. Oh but wait, it's the plain old leek you'd find in any grocery store. Sure glad they let me know.
For true prevention let's switch to the nouns, shall we? It's OK to use a foreign word that has no, or only a distant, English relative. But "Streusel" is called "strudel" in English. The Saboyon doesn't exist in English but the French word is for a sweet dessert which I really doubt is used in an oyster dish. etc.
With all those adjectives someone should do a "truth in advertising" sting on those restaurants. It'd make great TV
I think you’re confusing two things. Strudel seems to be strudel as well in English, while Streusel is a kind of crumble, it’s not a dish by itself.
Strudel is a bigger (generous 1 portion or more) piece of pastry (usually puff pastry, but plain pastry dough is also not unusual) with fruit filling, commonly apples and raisins. Often served with vanilla sauce.
Of those, I've usually seen strudel to have the original German meaning while streusel in english is usually used to mean Streuselkuchen with fruit.
But you’re eating at French laundry. The grow spot shouldn’t make any difference for a restaurant where A) they are supposed to prepare excellent dishes and B) you have so few choices.
“Well we finally got into French Laundry but decided to leave when we saw the menu and found they were serving garlic from Gilroy instead of garlic from Morgan Hill.”
You don’t go to the French Laundry for a meal, you go for an experience.
The food descriptions are sufficient but sparse also
What you describe is more like a bimodal distribution of price of a meal in restaurants using paper menus.
I'm not sure having longer descriptions is so much a trick as it lets the customer buy with more confidence. The customer knows they are getting what they want, and when they get it, they know what to expect.
Interesting that the study cited says that pictures of the food make you mentally taste it.
Guess it goes to show how localised some of these rules are.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/05/08/blast-from...
"Round fond is associated with sweeter taste" - this is it.
Synesthesia helps make perception of world more vibrant and memorable.
However, you have to be careful to not overreach in inferring why people do things:
>“The dollar sign is a pain point that reminds the diner that they are spending money,” says Allen. “By just using the figure, or even better, writing it out in words, it can reduce that pain.”
This sounds like a rationalization. It could be true. But if I were a menu designer, I wouldn't try to use it to predict anything beyond including currency symbols.
> A study conducted by researchers in Switzerland found that a wine labelled with a difficult-to-read script was liked more by drinkers than the same wine carrying a simpler typeface.
But from the abstract of the study linked to (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09503...):
> Fluency was manipulated via an easy- or difficult-to-read font. Results showed that there was no effect of the consumption domain. However, the wine was liked more in the high-fluency condition compared to the low-fluency condition. Thus, the results indicate that a wine tastes better if the labeled visual information can be processed relatively fluently.
Which is exactly the opposite.
I have in the past complained about bugs like this to a cousin of mine who works for the BBC. The response? "Hell, we're the press; what do you expect?"
(At one point we discussed it in person and she said that she actually thinks the BBC standards are pretty high, but that's merely relatively high in an industry where the standards are low. I suppose the years have made her cynical).
Is it a “trick” to use “grass-fed Angus steak with thick-cut rosemary fries“ rather than just say “steak and chips”, as the article claims? I don’t think so. The former is a more detailed description of what’s being offered. The latter refers to a much simpler meal.
The only really "scientific" stuff, seems to be the ability to crunch numbers, and calibrate the effect of menu design.
Otherwise, the language used, looks a lot like what I see with fashion, or graphic design. A lot of associating emotional responses with design elements.
The issue with that, is that a lot of these cues depend on societal culture. As in any craft, the designer needs to have a fairly good handle on their target audience.
What I have come to absolutely loathe, have been the "QR code" menus that so many restaurants have adopted; citing COVID caution.
I have gotten up and walked out of a couple of restaurants, because they insisted that I use my phone to scan a QR code on the table, and the phone's screen is immediately dominated by a massive advertisement or branding wank, and I need to scroll down to see the first items (which are often simple PDF scans of their printed menus -scans, not saved as PDF).
That's an interesting use of the world authenticity.