Some of you may be chefs. Some may be owners. Some may be PR wonks or restaurant consultants huddled away in a Manhattan skyscraper. But you all share one thing in common: You can’t write a menu to save your lives.
The subject has cropped up on eGullet in a tear about–mon dieu!–improper French on the menu at Coquette. It generated so much talk, Rick Nichols at the Inquirer used it as a motif for a recent piece about the French bistro. Nichols contends that food, not menu grammar, comes first and I couldn’t agree more. But being presented with a misspelled, verbose, florid, hard-to-read or conceited carte du jour takes away my appetite faster than Britney’s VMA performance.
I’m sure that unnecessary quotation marks or flagrant use of italicization doesn’t bother most people, but bad menus are my big pet peeve. This is not because I’m an especially grammatical person. (My editors will tell you I’m not.) But I take an effed-up bill of fare as a sign of carelessness. You sacrifice your days and nights, holidays and weddings, relationships and life savings on your restaurant, but when it comes time to write the menu, you suddenly can’t spell raspberry right? I refuse to believe you’re that stupid.
Be it a five-page litany printed on impeccable Italian stationery or a few words on a chalkboard, I feel a menu is the first impression, and care should always be exercised with first impressions. A menu sets the tone for the meal, telling diners what to expect. For example, I once ate at brasserie that offered a dish garnished with the essence of rose “pedal.” Should I assume that I’ll be eating a part of a Little Susie’s hot-pink Schwinn?
Not all of you do a bad job. As a pseudo-corporate enterprise, Starr’s restaurants produce flawless menus, no doubt meticulously proofread by a warehouse of underlings. Tinto’s and Amada’s menus are long but mercifully parsimonious with description. I love the scripture at Ansill, where the format reads: “Roasted Beets, oranges, $6.” It’s simple, stylish, tells you what you’re having, but leaves a little room for surprise.
Still, there’s an overwhelming amount of ugly in restaurant bibles. So in the spirit of friendship, I’ve compiled a set of rules, an Elements of Style for menu writers, if you will. All chefs with their fingers perched atop the keyboard, take heed. There will be a pop quiz Monday.
1. Restaurants are not libraries.
Meaning, I don’t want to read a book when I’m dining out. Unless you are a diner or restaurant in Chinatown, keep it to a page or two. Tease us and intrigue us with brief dish descriptions. Keep them minimal and you’ll have us longing for more. Yo, Django: “Mediterranean Sea Bass, Strawberry and Fava Bean Salad, Rhubarb-Lavender Coulis, Avocado, Asparagus”–we’re talking to you.
2. Spell-check. Really, is it that hard?
The same restaurant that botched petal also offered sundry tomatoes. The bright tricolor salad at a certain Fishtown bistro comes with misspelled arugula. Please, let your Microsoft Office Assistant Paper Clip scan your spelling, then double-check it the old-fashioned way to avoid the whole from/form quandary.
3. Stop with the gratuitous quotes.
These shackles of unnecessary punctuation are the hallmarks of bad menus, thrown around with abandon to encase the most innocuous of words. At an Italian restaurant recently I had the displeasure of ravioli “Amatriciana.” Why the quotes? Veal chop “Our Way." You don’t need quotes for that. This punctuation should be reserved for something cheeky, like “breakfast” dessert (coffee pot de crème and banana sticky buns) on the menu at Daniel Stern’s whimsical bistro, Gayle.
4. Watch your language.
If having a menu written in French is so crucial to your restaurant identity–ahem, Coquette–then having it written correctly should be as important. Hire a translator or write it in English.
5. Relax with the name-dropping.
Reading some menus is like watching Entourage, only with the names of farms and purveyors instead of celebrities. We appreciate that your watermelons come from Lancaster County, your bleu de Basques from DiBruno’s, your pork chops from Niman Ranch. Really we do. But don’t overload us with place-names. We don’t need to know the origin of every single sprig of parsley.
6. Know food terminology.
Don’t say it’s a chutney if it’s a relish. Don’t say it’s a coulis if it’s an emulsion. Don’t say it’s steak frites if it’s a rib eye. Ooh, déjà vu.
7. Stop naming dishes after people.
Do you really think your dear Aunt Ann wants to be remembered by sautéed veal medallions with portobello demi-glace?
AroundPhilly Staff
