A good menu tells guests what they'll get, in a voice that sounds like the venue. Clarity beats cleverness: guests should understand the main ingredient, the cooking method and anything surprising. Describing a dish as local, fresh or homemade must be accurate, because misleading descriptions can breach consumer protection law. Allergen information has to be reliable, so any wording changes need to flow through to the allergen matrix.
For tourist areas, translated menus are a genuine welcome, but machine translation can produce comedy or, worse, dangerous allergen errors. Use a native speaker who knows food, keep dish names in their original language where that's the point, and explain them simply. Pictures and icons can help, but they shouldn't replace words. Keep typography readable in low light, offer large-print versions and think about guests who use screen readers if your menu is online.
What we ask on the show
- What's the worst menu translation you've seen?
- Should menus use the original names of dishes?
- When does menu language become pretentious?
- Can a menu be too short?