Menu’s. A Simple Idea Gone Wrong
- davidcdouglass
- Aug 24
- 6 min read
Alright—let’s talk about bad menu construction. You know the kind: you sit down at a restaurant, open the menu, and suddenly you feel like you’re trying to solve a riddle written by someone who both hates you and wants your money. The lighting is dim, the font is tiny, and every dish comes with a list of ingredients that reads like the pantry inventory of a deranged prep cook. By the time you figure out what to order, you’re starving, annoyed, and silently wondering if anyone on earth has ever actually wanted their chicken “nestled” in a jus of quinoa foam.
Menus are supposed to do one thing: tell you what you can eat and how much it’ll cost. Simple. But chefs, restaurateurs, and the occasional sadistic graphic designer can’t leave well enough alone. Bad menus are like bad first dates: too much information, not enough clarity, and a creeping suspicion you’re being conned.
The Overwriter’s Special
Some menus read like novels—unnecessary novels. “Pan-seared line-caught Atlantic salmon, lovingly kissed with a reduction of wild-foraged elderberries, atop a delicate cushion of hand-whipped fennel purée, accompanied by the chef’s whimsical interpretation of turnip.” Stop. Nobody is lovingly kissing your salmon. It got whacked against a cutting board and tossed into a pan by a line cook who’s on his eighth hour of the shift.
A good menu gives you a glimpse of what you’re eating, not the chef’s MFA thesis. If your entrée description requires three commas, a footnote, and possibly a glossary, you’ve failed. The diner doesn’t need the backstory of the fennel. We’re here to eat, not read your culinary memoir.
The Font Crimes
Why, in the name of all things edible, are menus printed in fonts no human eye can reasonably decipher in low lighting? Script fonts. Cursive fonts. Fonts that look like they were scrawled by a 19th-century apothecary. Or worse: Comic Sans. The only thing more horrifying than a fine dining establishment with Comic Sans is a steakhouse that thinks Gothic Blackletter is appropriate. Nothing says “please order the ribeye” like the vibe of a medieval death notice.
And the size—tiny. Microscopic. As if to say, “If you can’t read this, you don’t deserve to eat here.” Half the dining room is squinting like they’re decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls, holding the menu at arm’s length, pulling out phones for flashlight mode, while the server hovers with the patience of a saint.
Geographic Confusion
There’s a special place in hell for menus that decide to play world geography bingo. “Tuscan chicken tacos with Thai slaw and Cajun aioli.” Congratulations, you’ve created a United Nations potluck that nobody asked for. Fusion cuisine can be magical, but it should make sense. Slapping “Mediterranean,” “Tex-Mex,” and “Korean-inspired” onto the same plate doesn’t make you inventive; it makes you look like you spun a globe and threw darts blindfolded.
And don’t even get me started on “New American.” That label tells you absolutely nothing. Is it a burger? Is it sous-vide octopus? Is it a deconstructed Pop-Tart with saffron foam? New American is just the menu-writing equivalent of shrugging.
The Upsell Disguised as Options
Ah yes, the menu that pretends to offer choices. You order a burger. It comes with lettuce, tomato, and onion. Cheese? That’s extra. Fries? That’s extra. Sauce? Extra. Want your bun toasted? That’ll be $1.50, thanks. By the time you’ve constructed your “burger,” you’ve spent more than the GDP of a small island nation.
This is the same menu that lists “seasonal vegetables” as a side. Which vegetables? Nobody knows. Could be asparagus, could be a handful of sad, steamed zucchini. It’s the culinary equivalent of a scratch-off lottery ticket: you won’t win, but you’ll pay anyway.
The Too-Much-Choice Buffet
On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the Cheesecake Factory effect: menus so long they could double as beach reads. Nobody needs 200 entrée options. The kitchen doesn’t need it, the servers don’t need it, and the diner sure as hell doesn’t need it. You’re not showcasing variety; you’re revealing a lack of discipline. And let’s be real—there’s no way all those dishes are fresh. Half of that stuff is languishing in a walk-in freezer, waiting for the one brave soul who orders the “Jamaican Jerk Pasta” on a Tuesday night.
Too many options don’t make a restaurant exciting; they make it suspicious. If I wanted existential dread about making the wrong choice, I’d be on a dating app.
The Pretentious Minimalist Menu
Equally bad is the opposite extreme: the menu with one-word entries. “Duck. Beets. Foam.” That’s it. Three words, no prices. What does it mean? Is it duck with beets and foam? Is the foam made of beets? Do I get a plate of three separate ingredients tossed vaguely in my direction? And why does this entrée cost $47?
These menus scream, “If you have to ask, you don’t belong here.” They rely on the server to translate, which usually turns into a memorized monologue that sounds suspiciously like they’re auditioning for Shakespeare in the Park.
The Fake “Healthy” Section
The obligatory “Lite Fare” or “Healthy Options” page is the biggest lie of all. Grilled chicken salad? That’s 900 calories once you dump the “house-made buttermilk ranch” on it. The turkey wrap? Dry, sad, and still somehow pushing a day’s worth of sodium. And don’t even pretend the “veggie burger” isn’t just a sodium bomb glued together with questionable legumes.
These sections are less about health and more about guilt management. They exist to appease the one person at the table who didn’t want to come to this restaurant in the first place.
I once worked at a local Italian chain that was known for their briquette of noodles in a heavy cream sauce that was then deep fried. It was delicious but very rich.
They decided to create a “Lite Side” section on the menu and included the deep fried briquette slathered in marinara and topped with a slice of provolone cheese. Add a side salad and a drink, which I assume was a Diet Coke, and there you have it.
The Seasonal, Local, Organic, Sustainable—Buzzword Overload
We get it. The kale was massaged by Tibetan monks. The eggs came from chickens who do yoga at sunrise. The flour is stone-milled by a co-op of ethically minded lumberjacks. Enough already. Diners like knowing where their food comes from, but at some point, the avalanche of adjectives becomes white noise. “Local, organic, free-range, heritage, artisanal, sustainable, craft.” You’re not describing a chicken breast anymore; you’re describing a lifestyle brand.
And often, it’s just marketing fluff. That “local tomato” traveled 200 miles and tastes exactly like the one at the grocery store.
The Missing Price Trick
Another sleazy little trick: menus that don’t list prices. Or worse, menus that replace prices with “market.” Sure, I’ll take the lobster… until I discover “market price” means “one week’s rent.” Transparency matters. If you’re afraid to tell me how much your food costs, it’s too expensive, and you know it.
The “Concept” Menu
Then there’s the menu that isn’t even a menu—it’s an essay on the restaurant’s “philosophy.” Entire paragraphs about how the chef grew up watching his grandmother cook in the French countryside, or how the bar only stocks spirits curated by monks in the Pyrenees. It’s self-indulgent nonsense masquerading as storytelling. I’m sure your grandmother was lovely, but I don’t need her biography before I order my fries.
The Cure for Bad Menus
What makes a good menu? Clarity, brevity, honesty. A menu should answer three questions: What is it? How much is it? Why should I care? That’s it. Keep the fonts readable, the descriptions concise, the prices visible, and the buzzwords to a minimum.
Nobody leaves a restaurant saying, “Wow, the kerning on that menu was exquisite.” They remember the food, the service, and whether or not they felt ripped off. The menu is just the roadmap. Don’t make it a maze.
Bad menu construction is like bad stage direction—you notice it because it gets in the way of the performance. The goal should be invisible guidance: enough information to make you hungry, not so much that you want to throw the thing across the room. Because at the end of the day, the only thing worse than a bad menu… is realizing you picked the wrong dish because the menu tricked you into it.