Soil War
August 8, 2019
School Lunch Program
August 22, 2019
Food Chain Radio Show #1198
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Restaurant Menu –What To Order?
Guest: Restaurant Menu Engineer, Gregg Rapp
I had the opportunity to live aboard a U.S. Navy ship some years back, and so became intimately familiar with the fine Navy cuisine cooked up in the ship’s galley.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – What’s On The Restaurant Menu – Menu Engineer
To get to that food three times a day, I had to stand in line with fellow sailors as the mess hands filled the trays of those at the head of the line.
Part of what made standing in that line tolerable was the description of what we were to eat on the menu board.
The description was always hopeful, as if we were to be eating at a five-star restaurant in New York City, instead of a haze grey ship sailing about the South China Sea. The menu would read: “Today’s entre…Swiss Steak Jardiniére – Cubed round steak sautéed to seal in the flavor and the slowly baked with onion, carrots, tomato, celery with garlic and seasoning.”
Of course, the food that would be plopped onto the tray by the smiling mess attendant would never live up to its menu promise. But I did not mind. In fact, I came to enjoy the tease, and wondered who the menu wordsmith might be.
Many years later I still wonder at the talent displayed by the composers of restaurant menus, and wonder how they get us to eat what they want us to eat. And so, let’s to ask …
Leave a comment below: How do restaurants get us to eat, what they want us to eat?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
