A 100-year-old menu from Los Angeles' California Club — in the archives of the Los Angeles Public Library — tells the tale of a banquet meal with pomp, gravitas and breathtaking brevity. Croute, au Poe. Fillet of Barracuda. Lettuce, Mustard Dressing. (That's a salad, for anyone so used to today's litany of additions to their lettuce that the simplicity of the dish fooled you.) A Christmas menu circa 1909 from the Hallenbeck Hotel bears perhaps my favorite menu item, ever: Tomatoes, stuffed. Stuffed with what? The mystery is thrilling.
The mystery coded into today's menus is more subtle: Can you, after reading a list of ingredients and marketing terms that can run on for two, three or more lines, remember what the dish was supposed to be in the first place?
Over the past century, especially the last few decades, menus have replaced brevity with verbosity, gravitas with information overload. Restaurants inundate you with every last ingredient in a dish, listing pedigree, origin, method of preparation and how it was shipped, biked or driven to the restaurant. These days, read about a dish at your local restaurant, and you'll likely feel more confusion than thrill.
Come the Roaring '20s, description creep was already having an effect on menus. A word here, a word there, meant to add specificity to each dish. Even the previously brief California Club menu began changing with the times. Sweet Potatoes, Southern Style. Brussels Sprouts Risolee. Seaput Oysters, Half Shell. Except for the oysters, most folks aren't going to gain any new information from the added words, unless they happen to know that risolee is a complicated, three-step cooking method involving blanching, sautéing and roasting. And how many ways of cooking potatoes are there in the South?
Before this, people who ate out at fine-dining establishments were expected to have a certain level of expertise. Say Poulet Normandine and diners knew what you were talking about. But access to these high-falutin' restaurants became easier, and more of the middle class and nouveau riche were able to afford a big night on the town. These new diners needed a little education, so menus had to change.
By the 1980s, though, the California Club menu had changed dramatically. A simple side of vegetables had suddenly blossomed into "Cook's Rotunda of Spinach with carrot triangles and potato spheres." I guess the shape of the carrots and potatoes is mildly interesting, but what makes the spinach a "rotunda?"
The modern era of menu design kicked off in the '80s. Formerly mere respected tradesmen, chefs have become artists of the highest caliber, their work celebrated in magazines and on television, their personal lives fodder for gossip pages. No longer satisfied with merely putting fantastic food on a plate, they want words to set the stage for the meal just as much as service and décor. Menu descriptions are now meant to knock your socks off before a single bite of food hits your mouth.
Today's menus substitute propaganda for description, marketing for details, especially at the middle range of casual dining. At Outback Steakhouse, chicken wings are "fresh," chicken strips are "moist," crab cakes are "delectable," and desserts are "irresistible." You don't have to eat the food; the menu tastes it for you.
Steaks are described as "USDA choice beef that's hand-cut and aged just right. Each one gets a generous sprinkling of our special blend of savory spices and is seared over a red hot grill." Sounds evocative. Let me translate: decent beef, grilled, with salt, pepper and butter.
In fine-dining restaurants, culinary wordsmiths have a lot of ammo to work with. Where the ingredients come from, especially prestigious producers or exotic regions, adds weight to a dish. So do indications of freshness, or whether ingredients are sourced from local growers and ranchers. You feel a lot better shelling out $35 for a piece of fish and some green beans if you've been convinced that it conforms to your own sense of luxury or your culinary-political ideals.
Many restaurants resort to a flood of information until the words indicate more a feast fit for a Sultan than a simple plate of food. Tampa's Mise En Place, a restaurant I love, serves "ancho chimi churri venison loin, purple potato rabbit corn hash, haricot vert jicama pinon salad, plantain mole, aji amarillo chile butter," as an entrée. Not only am I not sure what all that is, I waver between awe and concern; can they fit that many things on one plate?
A few years ago, New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni summed up the decades-long trend toward menu complexity. The scariest things a diner can hear "have nothing to do with failed health inspections, bungled reservations or eccentric concoctions," he explains. "The five scariest words are: 'Let me explain the menu.'"
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2008.