FOOD / RESTAURANT SPECIAL .......MENU CARD

RESTAURANT MENU CARD

IN A CROWDED MARKET, MENUS HAVE BECOME THE NEW FRONTIER IN THE BATTLE FOR CUSTOMERS — AFTER SERVICE, INTERIOR DESIGN AND PLATING 

Farmville-style illustration of a green fields and farmhouses, with two bugle-blowing hens outside, invite early risers in Andheri to a leisurely breakfast of eggs, waffles, pancakes and healthy blended juices served in jars.

Across the 25-page menu of Jamjar Diner in Versova, each section — burgers and hotdogs, soups and salads, desserts and wines, and even cigarettes — uses graphics, flowcharts and illustrations to draw the diner in.

Pork and chicken dishes are marked with silhouettes of their key ingredient. On the wine page, a flowchart organises offering by price, with the lightest and most expensive on top.

It’s light-hearted, but beneath the whimsy and sense of fun is a very concerted effort to do three very specific things — impress the diner, entice him to respond to every section, and create a talking point and USP that will act as an extension of the brand.

In a crowded market where little differentiates one mid-level restaurant’s offerings from menus have become the new frontier in the battle for customers — after service, interior design and plating.

Gone are the days when near-identical, laminated pages threw up a jumble of snacks, mini-meals, juices and desserts.

“From the time of the oral menu — when most of the customers at Udupi joints and Irani cafés would just ask waiters what was being served, and the waiters would recite by rote the most popular dishes of the establishment, the menu in Mumbai’s now-multi-cuisine restaurant  has come a long way,” says Dallas Fernandes, whose communication design firm has designed menus for Woodside Inn in Colaba and Andheri, and The Pantry at Kala Ghoda.

Amid a proliferation of standalone restaurants, many set up by young, well-travelled entrepreneurs — and catering to young, well-travelled customers — the menu has evolved from a mere laundry list of dishes, arranged in any order, to yet another crucial branding element.

Jamjar Diner, for instance, is an all-day diner that transforms from a breakfast haunt to a neighbourhood pub through the day. Its interiors are dominated by wine racks and asymmetrically mounted bookcases and drawers. And its buzzy menu is an extension of this yuppie brand identity.

“Not just in Mumbai, but casual dining restaurateurs across India are now looking at menu design quite seriously,” says Sahil Timbadia, 29, co-owner of Jamjar and Bandra pub Bonobo.

“My two partners and I, in fact, spent a month brainstorming and fine-tuning this menu. In a competitive market, any edge over the other restaurants, any way to entice customers to choose new dishes or try something different, is important. The aim is to create a menu that is an extension of the brand and vibe that you aim to create in your restaurant.”

There are many elements that go into making a ‘competitive’ menu — colour schemes, typeface, lettering size, sections, placing and pricing of dishes, descriptions and use of photos, illustrations, icons and graphics.

“Restaurateurs are looking at restaurants as brands. A menu, therefore, has become an extension of that brand,” says Mangal Dalal, food writer and co-founder of Restaurant Week India. “Today, a menu is to a restaurant what a visiting card is to a professional.”

At the Powai outlet of US-based restaurant chain Chili’s Grill & Bar, the menu features bold photos of the actual dishes, to play with customers’ visual senses and tickle their tastebuds. There’s  also a ‘Chili’s Dictionary’Dictio section, which explaiexplains terms such as fajita,fajita chipotle, quesadilla and PPico de Gallo.

“InternationalI chains settingsetti up restaurants in Mumbai,M with their integratedinte interiors and memenus, have coerced moremo casual-dining restaurantsre to focus on theseth aspects too,” says Nishant Dholakia, south and west India businessb head for Chili’s Grill & Bar.

Menu engineering for Dholakia is a dynamic science.ence. “Mumbai has a highhi h percentaget off vegetarians,” he says. “Challenges like these demand smart menu engineering and smarter revisions. Almost 25% of the items on our south and west India menus, for instance, are vegetarian.”

The Pantry, an all-day café in Kala Ghoda with stark white interiors, white lacy curtains, elegant furniture and arched windows, aims to recreate a piece of Paris in a Mumbai bylane.

Its white menu clipped to a brown writing pad is in sync with these chic interiors. But for a café whose philosophy is to ‘celebrate fresh local produce and simple, rustic flavours’, the menu complements its identity too, in form as well as design.

“Since many of the dishes are seasonal, I had to design the entire menu on a Word document, so that it could be updated regularly and then just printed out,” says communication designer Dallas Fernandes. “When a page needs to be changed, the newer version is just clipped in with the rest in the writing pad.”

“Menus have become a differentiating factor for restaurants, but menu engineerkids aims to reach out to customers above the age of five.

“Unlike the fuddy-duddy types of places, casual dining restaurants in the city are adopting a slightly gourmet, chef-centred approach,” says food writer Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi. “Unfortunately, the novelty value is more outside the kitchen than inside it. In many cases, the first impression, the menu, has become more important than the final impression, the food.”

Both as a reviewer and a foodie, Sanghvi says, the most creative menus cannot make up for frozen potato fingers served as fries, or wilted lettuce in stale salads.

 HT