Eat Out Eat Well

menu choices

Is What You Order In A Restaurant Really Your Choice?

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Have you ever walked into a restaurant absolutely certain that you know what you want to eat? Then the waiter hands you the menu and asks if you want to hear the specials. All of a sudden your “I’m absolutely certain that this is what I’m going to order” has taken a back seat to the pasta special. Why?

Remember Paul Simon’s song, “Mother and Child Reunion”? According to Simon he “was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It’s chicken and eggs. And I said, I gotta use that one.”

Putting aside the popularity of the song, who would think to describe chicken and eggs as a Mother and Child Reunion?

Is What You Order Really Your Choice?

Smart restaurant owners and chefs use creative phrasing and mouthwatering descriptions to describe their food.  They’re using menu psychology to suggestively sell from their menu pages. They use design, placement, and words to direct your attention to key items on their menus so it’s more likely that you’ll notice, remember, and order what they’ve pointed you toward.

Sometimes they highlight their signature dishes, but mostly they want to get you to focus on their high profit margin items — the ones that make them the most money. They aren’t always the most expensive, but they are the most profitable.

There’s nothing wrong with ordering something that’s going to make money for a restaurant, but wouldn’t you like to feel that the selection is purely your choice rather than the restaurant’s?

Menus Target Both Your Stomach And Your Mind

A menu is targeted not just at your stomach, but also to your mind.

Gallup once reported that most people spend an average of 109 seconds reading a menu — a pretty short amount of time. Even if people take longer to really read it — after all, some menus are like encyclopedias — a menu’s design means more than a nice layout. It requires psychology and marketing, too.

It’s in the restaurant’s best interest to really pay attention to its menu – a redesign can improve sales by an average of 2 to 10% — which could mean a significant boost in income.

So, a descriptive phrase like “Mother and Child Reunion” is just one of many ways to influence your choice. The messages are often subliminal, but where menu items are placed, how graphics are used, the way the food and drink choices are described, and even the use of dollar signs — all send you directional signals.

The bottom line is that restaurants hope that their menus — a magical brew of prices; superlative or descriptive words; and varying fonts, sizes, and colors — will play with your brain cells and nudge you toward making the choices they would like you to make.

Do you eat out?  This is the second article in a series of consecutive posts about decoding restaurant menus. Keep checking back for more information that might help you with your restaurant choices.

 

Some Good Things To Know About Restaurant Menus

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You’ve finished your restaurant meal and plunk down your cold hard cash or rectangular piece of plastic.  You’re paying for your restaurant meal, but do you feel as though what you ate was what you really wanted?

We often overlook the fact that restaurants are businesses and their income comes from what they sell to you. The money they make needs to cover their costs including the food they purchase, laundry and utility bills, rent, cleaning supplies, salaries, glasses, dishes, and so much more.

The Menu And The Mark-Up

The menu is the restaurant’s calling card and its main selling tool – it’s used to convince you to buy what the restaurant has to sell. The way a menu is arranged and how it looks and is written can make or break a restaurant.

The mark-up on the items on the menu is often between 350 and 400%. If the ingredients for a dish cost $3, the dish will probably end up being priced at about $12 — so dishes made with pricier ingredients will, in most cases, cost more.

But most restaurateurs are savvy and will adjust prices to what customers will pay. Most customers, for instance, won’t plunk down $50 for a 10 ounce steak, so menu items are balanced for profit and loss. A restaurant might lose money on steak by pricing it at a lower mark-up, but then make up for it with the mark-up on popular items with less costly ingredients — like pasta and pizza.

Think About What You Pay For Food In The Supermarket

To put things in perspective, think about how much you pay for food when you go grocery shopping. Pasta and rice cost very little, good steak and sushi grade fish cost a whole lot more. In a game of checks and balances that ultimately is reflected in the prices you see on the menu, good executive chefs monitor and leverage every product that comes through their doors.

Food that isn’t sold during earlier meals gets repurposed (ever wonder about the soup of the day, the stew, or the hash?). Good chefs can make those dishes sound delicious and taste wonderful – while, at the same time, marking them up and putting them on the menu as fabulous specials that sell out.

Do you eat out?  This is the first in a series of consecutive posts about decoding restaurant menus. Keep checking back for more information that might help you with your restaurant choices.

 

Key Words For “Maybe Yes, Maybe No” Menu Choices

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Menus, both restaurant and take-out, are filled with descriptive and sometimes mouth-watering words.  They’re meant to:

  • entice you to order certain items by making them sound scrumptious, or to
  • make you think that a food, sauce, or dressing is lower in calories or an awesome health food.

Maybe Yes, Maybe No Adjectives

This is a list of words frequently used on menus to describe foods that can be considered “yellow light foods.” They are the foods you  should cautiously choose because they may or may not be healthy choices.

  • Amandine/Almondine
  • Baked
  • Basted
  • Light/Lite
  • Marinated
  • Panini
  • Reduced
  • Sauteed
  • Stewed
  • Stir-Fry
  • Vegetarian
  • Vinaigrette

 Why They’re Yellow Light Foods:

Amandine/Almondine:  Means food that is garnished with almonds. The caution: the ingredients (often green beans, fish, asparagus, potatoes) are usually cooked with butter and seasonings and sprinkled with whole or flaked toasted almonds. The butter makes them taste good and allows the nuts to stick to the main ingredient — but both add significant calories.

Baked:  Food that is cooked by using dry heat.  The caution light applies to the main ingredients. What is being baked – is it baked fish or a baked cookie?

Basted: Means that either the juices of the cooking meat, melted fat, or other liquids such as marinades – are poured over meat during the cooking process to keep it moist.  The caution is in determining what the basting liquid is:  fat or the juice of the meat?

Light or lite:  If 50% or more of the calories in a food come  from fat, the fat must be reduced by at least 50% per serving to be called light. If less than 50% of the calories come from fat, the fat must be reduced by at least 50% or the calories reduced by at least 1/3 per serving for the food to be called light. The caution:  food manufacturers determine these percentages through laboratory analysis – but how does your local diner determine what is “light or lite” even if there is a “light or lite” claim on their menu?

Marinated:  Means to soak or steep meat, fowl, fish, or vegetables in a liquid mixture — which is usually vinegar or wine and oil combined with various spices and herbs.  The caution:  how much oil or even sweetener is in the marinade that has permeated the meat, fowl, fish, or vegetables?

Panini:  A pressed and toasted sandwich.  The caution:  What are the sandwich ingredients — for instance are they heavy on vegetables or on salami — and how much oil is used on the grill? If the sandwich comes out nice and crunchy and crispy you can bet it was pressed on a grill loaded with grease.

Reduced:  To be called reduced in calories, a food must contain at least 25% fewer calories per serving than the reference food (the version of the food that is not lower in calories).  For meals and main dishes there must be at least 25% fewer calories per 100 grams of food.  The caution:  the “reference food” (the regular, not low in calories version) may be a very high calorie food to begin with – meaning that 25% less of very high calories is still a lot calories.  And who’s measuring in the kitchen of your local restaurant? Don’t be duped.

Sauteed:  Means food that is fried quickly in a little oil.  The caution is the same as with stir-fry (see below); the amount of oil and the temperature of the oil.

Stewed:  To cook by slowly boiling or simmering.  The caution:  what is the stewing liquid — is it tomato based or is there a lot of fat?

Stir-Fry:  Means to cook small pieces of vegetables, grains, or meat by quickly frying and stirring them in a small amount of oil over high heat (frequently in a wok).  The caution is the amount and temperature of the oil.  Oil at a lower temperature will lead to a longer cooking time and the ingredients absorbing more oil.

Vegetarian:  Refers to a dish made without meat, fish, or fowl.  The caution is that many vegetarian dishes are prepared with a lot of breading, cheese, and fat.

Vinaigrette: A common salad dressing made with olive or other oils and combined with vinegar and/or lemon juice (plus seasonings and herbs).  The caution is in the proportion of oil to the acidic vinegar or lemon juice.  Sometimes it might be as great as 4:1 oil to acid and sometimes it might be 1:1, or half oil and half acid.  A fifty-fifty mix will be lower in calories than a mix that is 75% oil.

Do you have any “yellow-light foods” to add to this list?

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