Restaurants are shortening menus because of new industry realities. But small menus are better anyway, writes rtsugar
As it should be. Photo: Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Getty Images The first New York City restaurant I fell in love with served only one thing. I had not known this was a possibility. I had never encountered a restaurant that did not require me to make any decisions at all. Here is how it worked: You showed up at dinnertime. You got dinner. You didn’t have to take responsibility for your choices, because there were no choices. I felt like a very sophisticated baby. What I mean is, it was perfect.
The same thing is playing out across the industry, not just at high-end restaurants, but at giant corporate chains. Applebee’s, which drastically downsized its menu during the initial months of the pandemic, announced in May that the smaller menu would be permanent. Red Robin did the same. “I don’t see us going back to the full 12-page menu,” said IHOP CMO Brad Haley.
The best way to experience a restaurant, I have always felt, is by eating exactly what it wants to feed you. I do not want choices. I want the best thing. A restaurant might have five or ten best things, but it cannot have 45. There are many infuriating things about the world, but one of the more fixable is the sensation of acute regret from having ordered wrong. Why are there possibly wrong orders? Recently, I was at a fancy restaurant with great pastas and bad pizzas.
A short menu, though, exudes confidence. It is a statement. It commands respect. Without the padding of half-hearted roasted cauliflower and ambivalent crostini, a short-menued restaurant has decided exactly what it is. Corner Bistro, for example: Its classic tiny menu accounts for much of its appeal. It is a restaurant for hamburgers and beers . There are no salads, because Corner Bistro is not interested in salads.
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