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Are you a piano player? Not necessarily an exceptional one, but skilled enough to be passionate. Because there’s something I genuinely want to understand. Picture yourself in a train station when someone walks up to a public piano and starts playing Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor. Not the entire piece, just the beginning. With incorrect notes, no use of the pedals, and a left hand moving clumsily like a crab. What does that make you feel? Would you get angry? A bit agitated? Would you need to be physically restrained?
I don’t play the piano, I write about food. It should be smooth sailing – you don’t come across amateur writers attempting to compose an eloquent 800-word piece on sourdough bread on the upper deck of a bus. I say “should” because the problem is that every single day, I have to endure something that frustrates me to no end. I have to read menus.
Whether it’s a laminated A3 sheet with a coloring page on the back, a handwritten note, a blackboard, or a beautifully designed leather-bound booklet, a menu is the catalog from which you make your dining choices. Within that framework, it can either please or confuse, and in my case, it brings on stress-induced headaches, increased heart rate, and shortness of breath.
What bothers me at the moment is a trend among chefs for brevity and minimalism, devoid of descriptive adjectives.
“Pork, potato, leaves, ferment” is not a menu, it’s a challenge.
I can imagine the author in the kitchen, taunting me.
“Do you want to make an informed decision? Do you want to have an opinion about my cooking? I live by my own rules! I reject your conventional expectations. How I choose to combine pork, potato, leaves, and ferment is my individual inspiration. It’s none of your business. Only what you need to know… and you don’t.”
I doubt Botticelli was ever asked to summarize ‘Nascita di Venere’ on a sheet of paper, but if he had, he wouldn’t have written “Paint. Canvas. Woman. Scallop.”
Menus used to consist of well-known classics that everyone understood. Now that the world of food has become more intriguing, complex, experimental, and imaginative, it is foolish of chefs to provide less rather than more information.
Having worked in advertising for years, I believe in the power of words to influence consumer behavior. Now, my task is to describe food to you, so I have to believe that I can effectively convey the experience of eating through words, or else I would have to quit. I definitely appreciate menus that utilize language, no matter how overused, to present a dish in the best possible light. I prefer menus that spin a story.
“Batons of spankingly fresh, line-caught cod, coated in sourdough breadcrumbs, served with our homemade ketchup” may appear verbose, but it sets expectations and draws you in. You get a sense that someone has cared about what they’re cooking and made an effort to explain it to you, even if it’s just a description of a fish finger. There are also subtle cues, like a touch of French. It’s already priming you for the experience ahead.
I recently interviewed some individuals at the US Department of Agriculture to learn what they consider makes beef delicious. They have metrics for every aspect of taste imaginable. I discovered that there are two aspects of juiciness. There’s the primary juiciness, which comes from the fats and liquids naturally found in the meat, and then there’s the secondary “induced” juiciness, the mouth-watering response triggered not only by the meat itself, but also by the anticipation and memories associated with it. Understanding the concept of “secondary juiciness” motivates me to keep working with words. It validates my belief that reading a food description influences our physical response and enhances our enjoyment when it comes time to eat. To purposefully ignore this significant element of food enjoyment is more than just odd. It’s like deciding one day to cook without using any salt.
And it’s not just about enhancing taste. The menu also sets the overall tone and atmosphere of the restaurant. While there are performative and sometimes excessive details about sourcing and provenance, such as “Shoulder of organic Swaledale lamb… from Millbeck Farm… named Molly… slaughtered by farmer George Hodgson… using a PAS Type P penetrating cartridge stunner,” there are also simple, traditional words like “home-made” or “our own” that can make diners feel special, welcomed, and comfortable in your establishment – the epitome of hospitality. Failing to seize that opportunity to connect with your guests is a grave mistake.
In the end, the menu is the most critical piece of written communication in the restaurant’s arsenal. Customers may spend a good 10 minutes studying it. If you can’t insert something wonderful about the place within those pages, then you have failed. By obscuring and withholding information in favor of minimalism, chefs may believe they are signaling their artistic prowess and demanding our trust, but it comes across as unappealing arrogance.
There is a simple contradiction at the core of this issue. The menu is about setting expectations. Diners relish in having expectations because their enjoyment lies in the anticipation of those expectations being met. Chefs, on the other hand, strive to surpass expectations, so perhaps they think they can gain an advantage by underselling their dishes with bland descriptions. But do they really want to deprive us of that added layer of anticipatory pleasure?
Follow Tim on Twitter @TimHayward, on Instagram @timhayward and email him at [email protected]
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