Diners kept guessing by menus more heavily garnished than the meals
WASHINGTON — Teddy and the Bully Bar in downtown Washington is a tribute to the U. S.’ s naturalist president, Theodore Roosevelt. The theme is supported by fanciful faux taxidermy and a wall created from nearly 500 miniature Mount Rush-mores.
Small plates are the drill, staff members tells you. Everyone should consider ordering two to three dishes, they advise. And, by the way, the pacing is up to us.
“We’re a free- flowing kitchen,” my waiter says. “The food comes out as it’s ready.”
We pause to digest the information, and then he says, “I’ll try to course it out for you,” as if we should be grateful for the favour.
Then there’s the menu itself, divided into eight categories.
“Foraged” is mostly vegetables. “Grains” gathers pastas. “Coast & Plains” includes fried chicken and Maine mussels.
The waiter tells us the “more substantial” dishes are under “Square Deal Plates.” Those are what we used to call main courses.
Is anyone else hungry for the good old days? Not so long ago, a diner would go to a restaurant and select an appetizer and an entrée from lists labelled, quaintly, “appetizers” and “entrées.” Maybe something sweet, too, from a menu headlined “desserts.”
The dishes would come out in exactly the order in which they were placed, with appropriate pauses in between. And you had some idea of how much a meal would cost.
At The Fainting Goat in northwest Washington, the menu categories — “Nibble,” “Chomp” and “Feed,” among others — all but make chewing sounds. Without direction, a diner is unsure if “Graze” means bigger than “Nibble” and how “Chomp” differs from “Feed.”
Translation, please? Chef Nathan Beauchamp says nibbles are three to four pieces of hors d’oeuvres (“not quite an appetizer”), and “graze” equates to an appetizer.
Restaurant observers say overembellishment and quirky dish categories are ways for chefs to build their brands and distinguish their product from the competition.
But evidence suggests diners don’t want too many choices.
Aaron Allen, a global restaurant consultant, points to McDonald’s, where the menu has swollen over the years to more than 100 items — but where just five choices account for 40 per cent of the chain’s sales.
As Allen points out, the word restaurant comes from the French restaurer, or restore — hardly the feeling that washes over some of us when we find ourselves at the mercy of a menu.