On 6/13/06, Madhu Menon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
why would that be?
Oh...I didn't know that menus would be written like this..... and I have yet to visit a restaurant where the guest is given a menu with no price list.
Certainly your descriptions on your website don't come under what *I* call "arty-farty"; imo, they describe, as you say, dishes unfamiliar to many. Before I came to your restaurant, I read the description and asked for the aubergine dish, which, alas, I couldn't have. I had read up on what I was likely to get in the vegetarian category and really enjoyed the cauliflower and the corn hors d'ouvres I ate.
To each his own, Madman! Who knows, maybe the mix, or, rather, the one-after-another taste of different flavours together on the plate pleases someone's palate? I would take the example of a banana leaf shaapaadu where I might have a taste of the sweet pacchadi and then pique it with a very different flavour from somewhere else on the leaf...
Like the guy who orders something and is told the orchestra is playing it. But I must say, escargots or foie gras sounds SO much better than snails and duck liver! But haggis is haggis, no matter HOW it is said...well, if YOU go "huh?", imagine the plight of the rest of us veg-sambar types!
Menu stacking (and ordering) has been refined to a digital art, you know....that is, in some Chinese restaurants in LA, we have ordered "two portions of no.124, with a side order of no. 48, please"....
Deepa Mohan wrote:
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> I don't think this will work at Shiok...most of the regulars, Madman
> says, just ask his advice about what to eat, and often wait for him to
> rustle up a special dish that might not be on the menu at all!
Actually, I had read most of these tips while doing research on
restaurant and menu design. I have incorporated most of them into our
menu. That's why you'll find the seafood on the top right of the third
page, for instance,
why would that be?
and why the dishes aren't arranged in "cheapest to
most expensive" order.
Oh...I didn't know that menus would be written like this..... and I have yet to visit a restaurant where the guest is given a menu with no price list.
If you've read the menu (it's on my site), it
also describes each dish in a fair bit of detail, but that was also
partly for educational purposes, since many customers were not likely to
know many of the dishes.
Certainly your descriptions on your website don't come under what *I* call "arty-farty"; imo, they describe, as you say, dishes unfamiliar to many. Before I came to your restaurant, I read the description and asked for the aubergine dish, which, alas, I couldn't have. I had read up on what I was likely to get in the vegetarian category and really enjoyed the cauliflower and the corn hors d'ouvres I ate.
What's the point of mixing them all up on
the same plate and totally killing the unique flavour of all of them?
To each his own, Madman! Who knows, maybe the mix, or, rather, the one-after-another taste of different flavours together on the plate pleases someone's palate? I would take the example of a banana leaf shaapaadu where I might have a taste of the sweet pacchadi and then pique it with a very different flavour from somewhere else on the leaf...
Some of the foreign high-end restaurant
menus I have seen have left me scratching my head and going, "huh?"
Like the guy who orders something and is told the orchestra is playing it. But I must say, escargots or foie gras sounds SO much better than snails and duck liver! But haggis is haggis, no matter HOW it is said...well, if YOU go "huh?", imagine the plight of the rest of us veg-sambar types!
Lastly, I wish some menus made better use of spacing between menu items.
items stacked one below the other without any room in between.
Menu stacking (and ordering) has been refined to a digital art, you know....that is, in some Chinese restaurants in LA, we have ordered "two portions of no.124, with a side order of no. 48, please"....
Great post Madhu! Enjoyed it very much.
