By Joan Lang
It’s no secret that menus have become more distinctive in recent years. Not the layout or appearance, necessarily: In fact, the increasing number of restaurants that print their own menus from an easily changeable computer document has made the actual appearance of many menus more straightforward.
Instead, it’s the format and concept of the menu itself that’s been changing. It’s almost unusual these days to see a menu itemized by appetizer, entrée, dessert; instead you’ve got categories like “Nibble and Share,” “Big Plates,” and “Sweet Endings.” Some menus don’t even have categories, but rough groups in which the customer can intuit the size and function of each menu item by its description and relative price.
The popularity of small plates and other forms of modular dining has had a lot to do with that. So has casualization. And the fact that operators are looking for every profit opportunity means that many restaurants now have multiple menus even at one daypart, from a bar and cocktail menu to a dessert selection.
Still, every once in a while along comes a new restaurant, and its menu, that yet manages to tilt the whole menu-writing game on its ear.
• iNG, Homaru Cantu’s new restaurant in Chicago, would seem too precious by far if Cantu weren’t such a genius—and if he hadn’t proved himself over and over at Motorino. With the theme of Imagining New Gastronomy, the restaurant concept is notable for a number of reasons, chief among them the fact that very few dishes are priced at over $20, for some seriously imagined food. But check out the menu. Customers can choose tasting menus that are designed and priced by the hour, and the a la carte selection is grouped by such categories as “cooling” (cold and raw items), “boiling” (including noodles in broth); and “sweetening” (that would be dessert to you, Bubba), as well as “sipping,” “brewing,” and “mixing” (wine, beer and cocktails, respectively.
• Where iNG is hyper modernist, José Andrés’s brand-new America Eats Tavern, in Washington, DC, is pretty much menu-as-historical-document. Named after the WPA’s writers project of the 1930s and inspired in part by archival cookbooks, the menu showcases “the fascinating history of our nation one plate at a time, whether it’s the origins of New England clam chowder or the introduction of grapefruit to America.” Thus there are Pickled Oysters from 18th century New York City and Shrimp ‘n’ Anson Mills Grits as an opportunity to point out that it was the Native Americans who first taught the Jamestown colonists to hull corn into hominy, in 1607. That the menu also manages to hit every current food-trend hotspot, from osters to fried chicken, makes it all the more interesting.