Bring back physical menus

Then we can all put away our smartphones when we dine

A bar on Dundas West called Swan Dive just announced plans to transition to a cash-only service model. The bar posted a photo to Instagram this week of a handwritten sign that reads (directly above a drawing of a heart): “Heads up guys: as of the 1st of December we will be going back to cash only. Yes we do have an ATM, no we are not sorry. Ok. That is all.”

This news makes me feel old because I was under the impression that every bar on Dundas West — especially the kind with irreverent signage — was always cash only.

But, of course, they weren’t. COVID-19 had its way with most business models, the dive bar included. In the early days of the pandemic, when we thought washing our hands for as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice all the way through could keep the virus at bay, the touch-nothing trend took over. Cash was no longer king. It was a reason to sanitize.

But Swan Dive’s embrace of a physical money model gives me hope that another item may also be on its way back into our hands: the physical menu.

Whether dense and dirty or clean and sparse, the physical menu is the dining accessory I seldom thought about pre-COVID, but whose absence I can’t shake when I go to a restaurant in the QR code era. Not only do I miss the act of leafing through a menu itself, especially the laminated kind at a diner or a Jewish deli where strange bedfellows are the norm (it’s not every day you see gefilte fish and eggplant Parmesan on the same page).

It’s that in Toronto and beyond the thing that has replaced the physical menu is a smartphone.

It’s small, it’s anti-social and ironically (considering its purpose in this context), it’s far from sanitary. In 2012, the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences published an article called “Why your cellphone has more germs than a toilet.” (Maybe because it’s so often used on one?)

Unsurprisingly, a study from 2017 by Estonian microbiologists “revealed high level bacterial contamination of secondary school students’ mobile phones.”

But beyond the sheer fact of the smartphone menu’s grossness, its presence is a constant reminder of COVID-19 — one that dampens a restaurant’s mood by creating the impression that every table is made up of people who don’t like each other.

Slate writer Christina Cauterucci addressed this in a June column about the QR code menu as a vibe killer as it forces diners to stare into their phones, often throughout a meal.

And we all know that staring into a phone begets more staring into a phone. Why not check your email while you’re browsing the beer list? And why put the phone back into your purse when you’re done? You’re going to order more food and drinks so you might as well keep it out on the table where you will notice and attend to its every vibration.

None of this would be a problem if the system actually worked. If QR code menus were proven to keep COVID numbers down, I’d happily stare into my phone at restaurant tables for the next five years. But we know well by now that though it isn’t impossible to catch COVID-19 via touch, it’s highly unlikely.

“There’s a long chain of events that would need to happen for someone to become infected through contact with groceries, mail, takeout containers or other surfaces,” infectious disease epidemiologist Julia Marcus told the New York Times last year.

On the other hand, the chain of events that would need to happen for you to become infected by the unmasked friend sitting across from you indoors is about as short as it gets. And yet fully vaccinated people are permitted to do this at restaurants in Ontario, as they should be.

Why then can’t they pick up a menu?

Physical menus aren’t merely low risk for COVID transmission. They may even help some businesses’ bottom lines. Last month, the CEO of American chain restaurant, BJ’s Restaurants Inc., told the trade publication “Nation’s Restaurant News” that customers spend roughly 70 cents more per cheque when they order off a physical menu vs. a QR code menu. The company plans to reinstate paper menus and phase out the QR versions as a result.

But for people concerned about the low risk of touch transmission, the constant disinfecting of surfaces isn’t going anywhere (in Toronto we’re so obsessed with deep cleaning we let it hold up our buses).

If physical menus return to restaurants in Toronto they’ll be wiped down with the tables and everything else. But they needn’t become relics of the recent past.

It’s time to bring back the paper menu and reserve the smartphone scrolling for where it belongs: the John.