How many different entrees do you prefer to see on a menu?

I really don’t care what else is on the menu, as long as they have good salads. That always sounds sort of weird to say out loud, but honestly I go out to eat to have a good salad. Sometimes soup. I really only switch it up to order fish, when places are having specials (usually on Fridays.)

I don’t like a ton of different option, because then I feel as if I can never decide and when I finally do I get paranoid that it wasn’t the best pick for me. 54th Street Grill & Bar seriously has at least 40 entrees to choose from.

The more limited the menu, the better the food. I like when I have a choice of 3 to 5 dishes.

I prefer to see “text only” on the menu. No photos of the food, and no remnants of old food.

@JLeslie You’d be wacked by the way we pick a place to eat when we go on vacation. We grab the Dining Guide, which is 80 to 90 pages with all the different area menus and go from there.

This place has a whole 7 entrees, but this is the size menu I am really looking for in a restaurant. Pretty good food, by the way.

Here are some of my thoughts on the Cheesecake Factory.

Studies have shown that the more choices you are given the more calories you are likely to consume.
I have found that the best food is at places with a limited, and sometimes frequently changing menu.
I rarely eat out, but if I do, it’s not going to be at Denny’s or even Cheesecake Factory.
Give me a high end steak house with a really good petite filet or grilled prawns and a creatively prepared vegetable any day.

I agree with @tom_g . Having worked in a restaurant, I get nervous when I see a menu with lots and lots of offerings, because I know there’s a limit to how much fresh food can be inventoried and held at the ready for all of those items. The more items there are, the less frequently most of these items will be ordered, so some things may go days without being ordered. The only rational way to pull this off is to prepare and freeze stuff that can be pulled out when that order finally does come through.

When there are just a few items, there’s a better chance that the elements of those dishes will have been prepared that day from fresh ingredients.

Limited menu, no pics. Big salad bar.

@smilingheart1 want to have dinner sometime?

I usually go out to eat at specific places, such as mexican, italian, Thai etc.
Just tried a new mexican place and I am hooked on them now, soooo good, best mole sauce I have ever had. :-D

It really doesn’t matter to me as long as the food is good, the service good and the atmosphere pleasing.

One chain I do not like at all, and don’t understand all the hype about is Applebees.

I do not like anything on their menu, it is overpriced and not very good quality IMO.

I am always turning down the Applebbees thing with others and they think I’m crazy, but, that place does nothing for me. lol

Quality establishments typically have small selections of excellent food. Despite the limited choices, the selections are usually quite varied. That said, I prefer small menus, usually.

1 or 2 fish, 1 or 2 chicken or fowl, 1 or 2 vegetarian, 2 or 3 beef/pork/lamb. So 7 to 10 is plenty. But a good selection of appetizers and salads, and a soup or two.

I like a better restaurant where a person can have two appetizers instead of an entree.

Gigantic menus always give me the impression that they have a lot of mediocre dishes. I like to see a couple fish, chicken, beef etc.

Limited menu. Otherwise I have a really hard time making a choice.
I’d also prefer a longer list of appetizers, those are always good.

Chain restaurants aren’t about great food, they’re about consistent food. I avoid them and go for local dives. I like the menu to have a few basics to suit most tastes but I usually go for whatever the chef’s special is.

The largest menu I ever saw was at The Blue Moon Cafe in North Chicago. I swear that it was 15 pages – front and back – with 10 additional pages of specials tucked into it! Good food, great service but go ½ hour before you’re hungry to give yourself time to read the menu.

Colomas cafe is open for biz. now.
Todays ‘special’ home made cream of celery soup with cornbread muffins. :-D

@ANef_is_Enuf Have you ever eaten at a Sweet Tomatoes? It’s self serve all you can eat, not fancy at all, but their salad selection is amazing. Actually, I think they have changed there format since I was there last, but I am sure their salads are still good.

I must be insane to keep going to the food questions. I love a good salad bar. That can make or break the dining experince. I’m starving for one now.

I prefer to eat where the beef is grass-fed and the veg are local. One of the places I prefer keeps their menu quite limited on special occasion days and for Sunday brunch, but the rest of the week they have a nice sized selection.

The desserts tend to be in season fruit pies/crumbles/cheesecakes.

My opinion on menus is skewed because I’m a vegetarian, so to me when I see a lot of entrees I’m a lot happier because it means more of a chance that I’ll be able to eat something other than a salad. Usually if it’s a smaller menu, it means I can get a salad or some kind of unhealthy fried appetizer (maybe).

@smilingheart1 , I hate salad bars. People pick them over. Any kind of buffet grosses me out.

I get the idea of small menus, but I don’t like chicken (meaning, half the menu) and many common seafoods (shrimp, scallops, again, a good portion of the menu), so then if I don’t like their beef option (and not everyone does beef well, nor does it always sound good especially as the most expensive item), I’m just out of luck. I love pasta, but most places don’t put any effort into making the pasta good, it’s just something to have on there, so then I’m just out of choices. No. Do NOT suggest a salad. I am NOT paying $13 for a freaking salad.

I don’t think the size of the menu has anything at all to do with the quality of the food. One of my favorite restaurants is a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant that has an astoundingly long list of items. Me and my best friend are determined to sample every single one of those items. It’s on our bucket list. So far we have never been disappointed at this particular restaurant.

Then there are other restaurants that specialize in one thing and they have only one or two options and that’s all, but if it’s good, that’s all that matters. Because I’m a vegetarian, this is probably a bad example, but In and Out Burgers is like that. They make burgers and fries, and that’s about it, because that’s what they’re good at and people love it.

I’m usually just grateful to find one vegetarian item on the menu at so-called “normal” restaurants where most “regular” people want to go. Most of the time it’s an iceberg lettuce salad with a mealy pink tomato and some stale croutons, or else it’s something with eggplant, which I can’t stand (even though I’m one of the least picky eaters I’ve ever met). If me and my friend visit one of our local Asian markets and someone in the produce section says, “What the hell is that?” I immediately want to try it! However, I’ve yet to taste durian, because I’d be afraid that I’d end up making my house or myself smell like that. Maybe some day, I’ll buy one of those frozen durians and take it out in the middle nowhere and give it a little taste.

So all things being equal, as long as the food at a particular restaurant is delicious, I like the longer lists, because I love to eat and I love to try new dishes, or new takes on familiar dishes.I guess that’s why I love buffets so much. I just love to eat. I’m rarely dissatisfied when I eat out.

It on how familiar I am with the food quality there. Places I love and crave, it’s because there is one, maybe two items I like so the menu can be small and I’ll never complain.

@JLeslie nope, never heard of it. We must not have one around here.

It’s called Soup Plantation in northern climates. Here is the website.

Thanks. There aren’t any locations anywhere near me, but I have heard of it as “Souplantation.” Looks like something I would enjoy, so if I ever happen to see one when I’m traveling, I’ll be sure to stop.

I just went to Souplantation yesterday! I love that place. Just this month they were declared a “certified green” restaurant. I had some of the best broccoli cheese soup ever!

Don’t matter the size of the menu so long as they have what I want. I hate going into a diner, order a meal (off the menu) and they say, “We ran out of that particular meat, but we can substitute…” I think I was partially responsible for chalk board specials because of my ravings.