This is overall a good thing, allowing more restaurants to use vernacular specific to the cultures they represent, or just have more fun with language. But lately I’ve been noticing more restaurants embracing that fun at the expense of actually telling the diner information like how big a dish is in comparison to others. When did we become allergic to the word “appetizers”?
Chalk it up to the Small Plates Meant for Sharing era, which has been going on for at least a decade, so much so that Bon Appetit’s Sam Stone begged in 2023 for restaurants to stop explaining that everything needed to be shared. If every plate came out as it was ready and was meant for everyone to have a bite or two, there was no point in separating things by appetizer and entree. And most restaurants still organized menus by smallest to largest plates, giving them more freedom to play with language since diners could intuit a pasta dish was bigger than an oyster.
But things still get weird. Appetizers are now “bites,” “snacks,”“small plates” or “smaller” to another section’s “larger.” At Hey Kiddo in Denver, the course trio is now “Small Shareables,” “Center Pieces,” and “Accompaniments.” Any plate is shareable if you’re with the right people, but, with this naming convention, at least you get a vague sense of which is bigger and smaller. But at Oko in Austin, there is both “Salo-Salo (Eat Together)” and “Para Sa Mesa (For the Table),” which sound like similar experiences. At Portland’s Love Shack, a mezze platter is listed under “bigger,” while a charcuterie board counts as something called “primo supreme.” And at Artis in Lakewood, Ohio, the menu is designated by time, with “Now,” “Soon,” “In a While,” and “Worth the Wait.” Dinner, complete with a slight unmooring of what you thought language was.
Erling Wu-Bower, chef partner at Maxwell’s Trading in Chicago, describes his food as “city food by city kids,” a swirl of influences and fun that shouldn’t resemble any sort of European tradition. Instead he’s more inspired by the Chinese meals he grew up with, where plates just keep coming. “I got away from appetizers and entrees because I had this idea of what the whole meal looked like. And if you label something, appetizers and entrees, you label beginnings and ends.”
Okay, so his menu still has “Beginnings,” which he says are more casual bites meant to be eaten with your hands and with a cocktail. But they lead into “Starch,” “Griddle Breads and Dunks,” “Substance, Grilled,” before finishing with “In Conclusion.” As servers explain, these are more categories than orders, and every table should be sharing everything.
Dania Daneilla Kim, general manager at New York’s Bananas, says the restaurant, which opened in January, has already gone through multiple menu evolutions. “It started off with bites, snacks, and shareables,” she says. However, diners appeared slightly confused as to what differentiated a bite and a snack, and how much food they might get with each. Now, the menu is organized with “Snacks,” “Starters,” and “Shareables.”
Part of having a menu is ensuring servers don’t have to spend precious minutes at every table explaining things, but both chefs note that guests still need help deciphering even more descriptive language. “I dislike rule-giving at the beginning of a meal. But we do say the menu is designed for a two-top to order one single thing from every header,” says Wu-Bower. Kim says she tells servers to break it down as the amount of bites each dish has, so people can make up their minds about how hungry they are. And of course, everything is meant to be shared, which is why words like appetizers and entrees don’t apply.
If sharing is the norm, then the menu ultimately is an afterthought. As Kim notes, “no one actually reads the menu.” Even if some clarification is needed, diners are more focused on the actual food descriptions than what category they fall under. And as more restaurants make sharing everything the standard, even words like “appetizer” and “entree” lose their traditional meanings. I can’t remember the last meal I had where an appetizer wasn’t shared, or where something wasn’t ordered “for the table,” no matter how it was listed on the menu.
The menu wording, instead, serves less as information and more as part of the aesthetic project of the entire restaurant. “Beginnings” is more casual than “appetizers” to Wu-Bower, setting the tone that service will be fun. “Snacks” evokes something fun you eat after school. Using non-English languages brings diners directly into the culture a chef is cooking from. “Even if no one else pays attention to the details, it’s still a reflection on us. If we’re not paying attention to the smaller details, what are we doing here?” says Kim. Just remember menus usually go from smaller to larger.
