The Importance of Menus
Menus can tell you everything you need to know about a restaurant. Have you ever gone to a restaurant that you thought was casual or great for families only to walk in spot the menus on the tables and realize you weren’t at the kind of place you thought. Maybe it was the French script on the menus that tipped you off that the restaurant isn’t a casual joint. Or perhaps the prices on the first page of the menu signaled that you had better find a way to get to an ATM or be prepared to wash some dishes.
Menus are important for a variety of reasons.
- Learn about the restaurant. Some menus include information about the people who own the restaurant, or the restaurant’s history or how the restaurant first came to be. Or maybe there’s just interesting stuff to read in addition to the dishes and prices. Restaurants recognize there can sometimes be a delay between getting you seated and getting your order. An information menu can help kill the time.
- Look up daily specials. Some restaurants put daily specials for entrees, or perhaps soups, drinks, desserts, etc., on their menus. When you’re at the restaurant, you need only determine what day it is to figure out if that’s the entree, soup, etc. that you want. That’s also a great way to decide the best day to go to that restaurant. If the restaurant offers to-go versions of their menus, you now know that Thursday is a perfect day to go for dinner because the split pea soup is being served.
- Can you afford this place? If you don’t have a to-go menu and you’ve never been to the restaurant before but want to give it a try, see if there’s a menu available online. Many restaurants offer copies of their menus online as a service for customers. A quick check at the entrees and prices can tell you all you need to know about whether the restaurant is affordable. And here’s a quick tip: If the meal names and descriptions are in another language and there is no price, you probably can’t afford the meal!
- Keep those to-go menus. There are a number of reasons to refer to a to-go menu, including some of the reasons listed above – from looking up daily specials to checking out the prices before you arrive in person without enough money. But perhaps the best reason to keep to-go menus is to order food that you can pick up. Maybe you don’t want to get dressed up or you just want to try something on the menu before getting it at the restaurant. Whatever the reason, to-go menus can help you eat delicious restaurant food any time you want.