"menu" news and stories

In case you've never encountered the convenience yourself, there's a drive-through window attached to one-third of the nation's Starbucks outposts. And the company has recently taken some heat over the newly designed menus offered at those drive-throughs. On August 31, listed items dropped from about 70 to a mere 25, and leaves out the option to buy a Tall (translation: smallest and least expensive) cup of coffee.

The Tall is still an option, just not an obvious one. Company spokeswoman Deb Trevino tells USA Today the change came in response to customers' requests to simplify the menu -- they were "frustrating" to read -- adding that Talls don't sell as well as Grandes and Ventis. She also says the company is making room for calorie postings, which will be required next year.

They may be the most expensive menus in the world -- and we're not talking about the price of the truffle mac 'n' cheese.

It's the menus themselves: at a restaurant in Sydney, Australia, the hostess doesn't hand you a boring old paper menu, but a brand new iPad.

We've got to admit, that's pretty cool.

The custom app at Mundo, in North Sydney, not only allows you to touch screen your way through the restaurant's selection of internationally inspired tapas, but when you've decided between the Szechwan Calamari or the Kingfish Ceviche, you can send the order to the kitchen yourself.

Do you identify as a pescatarian, or maybe a flexitarian (or is it flexatarian)? Do you say rocket or arugula? Sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke? How do you pronounce pecan? Are you more likely to give a man a fish, or teach him to fish--and who came up with that saying, anyway? All these may qualify as future topics of a fabulous new bi-weekly blog column on cookthink.com called "Minced Words," penned by Merriam-Webster lexicographer and bar proprietress Emily Brewster.

The subject? The language of food, something right up my alley (in fact, i wish I'd thought of it first). So far, Ms. Brewster has investigated the roots of political pork expressions like "pork barrel spending" and "high on the hog," questioned her own bar-restaurant's use of "carpaccio" for a dish without meat or fish (a pear dish, in this case), and waxed poetic on the subject of celestial-themed food terms like "ambrosia" and "angel food cake."

Ms. Brewster, a sort of William Safire of the food realm, has plenty of material to work with. The carpaccio bit interested me most so far--restaurant menus are notoriously loose in their terminology. Terrine, torte, deconstructed this, essence of that. What's your food terminology pet peeve?

Source

Effective immediately, a federal appeals court says that all New York restaurants must post their food's caloric information on menu boards, and should begin no later than tonight at midnight.

The bill will apply only to restaurants with 15 establishments or more, and demands that the calorie counts be printed in the same font and size as normal menu information (even if this means making the rest of the menu's text teeny-tiny).

Fines will be instated beginning July 18 if restaurant owners do not comply with the new law.

Restaurant owners will fight out the case again in court on June 9, when the showdown will likely begin again.

Source

Could a restaurant be so appealing, so irresistable, that you'd wait a year to get a reservation?

This one apparently is: Talula's Table in rural Pennsylvania, has been called the most difficult reservation to get in the country. Talula's is about an hour outside of Philly, has only one large farm table that seats 12, and is run by a husband and wife team. There's a store that sells cakes, pies, soups, and over 150 different kinds of cheeses (the co-owner spent her life studying cheeses).

But the real treat appears to be the restaurant. The eight-course tasting menu, which features fresh and primarily local ingredients, is the same every day for about 5-6 weeks, and then changes depending on what's in season.

The day that one NPR reporter visited, the menu was as follows: egg custard; mushroom risotto; hand-rolled rigatoni with snails; pampano roasted with a mango-saffron broth; pork osso bucco; lamb; blue-raisin chutney semolina; and for dessert - deep breath - a coffee-infused bavarian creme with bittersweet and white chocolate over a piece of buttery shortbread, covered in a blood orange jelly.

And for the record? If you want a reservation, call them tomorrow starting at 7 a.m. The first person to call that day gets the next reservation a year from now, and the process repeats itself the next day, and the next, and the next...

Source