When the menu reads like a travelogue

“Mrs. Miyasaka enters the living room wearing her traditional silk kimono… . She places a deceptively simple rice bowl before you. Her signature donburi. Tempura prawns, quail eggs, hand-picked enoki, and shimeji mushrooms in umami-rich dashi. Generations of culinary tradition in every spoonful.”

These are not lines from a book but from the refreshed menu at 360°, the signature restaurant at The Oberoi, New Delhi. Designed like a travelogue, each section of the menu dedicated to four cuisines—Japanese, Indian, Western and Thai-Indonesian—features quotes from books, verse, excerpts, vibrant paintings and photographs. The exquisite illustration of Mrs Miyasaka from ‘Making Miso and Memories’ envelops the guest into a storytelling session of sorts, where the text and the visuals offer a preview of what is to come to the table.

Just like at 360°, restaurants across the world are giving a lot of thought to the menu design, which adds that extra touch to the overall dining experience. The idea is to create a unique narrative about the ingredients they use and the culinary philosophy they follow—and even about location that they are based out of. According to Minakshi Singh, co-founder of bars such as Sidecar, Cocktails and Dreams Speakeasy and The Brook, a good menu should represent the diversity of a place. “As you travel more and more, you get exposed to different culinary programmes, and realise that the good menus are always about local stories. There are historic references—things that you wish to discover about a place beyond the usual sightseeing. The menu ought to reflect how closely are those cultural references associated with the culinary programme. In India too we are paying attention to this,” she says.

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The kind of paper and font that you use, and the way you describe the dish—all make or break the way a menu is perceived by a guest. In an insightful piece published in the Indian bimonthly food magazine, Enthucutlet, designer and cook Anurag Arora reflects on the care and consideration that usually goes into crafting a food menu. In the article, titled A Love Affair with Restaurant Menus, he describes the first menu that he ever collected, which was from a restaurant called Lula Cafe in Chicago in 2015.

“Each dish was named matter-of-factly (like ‘French Toast’), but the line following it—the description of its ingredients—truly captivated me… . I glanced through the description of each dish and noticed a consistent style – highlighting its ingredients and letting the diner connect the dots… . I looked at the menu again, and discerned the mood they were building with it. Their choice of paper was very considered, the typefaces used in the headings were elegant serif fonts, resulting in a finish that was both refined and minimal. This aesthetic also matched the plating which was in turn beautiful and intricate. It all started falling into place for me,” he writes.

At 360°, this new design is particularly significant as the menu has remained consistent ever since it opened. This is the first big change. According to Visheshwar Raj Singh, senior vice president and general manager, The Oberoi, New Delhi, work on the concept started nearly seven to eight months ago. Vishi, as he prefers to be called, had initially envisioned the menu as a coffee table book, with articles and photographs interspersed with the details of the dishes. This idea went through several iterations, eventually taking the shape of a travelogue. “We wanted a menu that was as creative as the food that our chefs whip up. Why limit creativity to the plates?” he asks.

Vishi is an art enthusiast and he wanted the menu to reflect that. “If I hadn’t been a hotelier, I would have been a photographer, a writer or a film director,” he adds. So, the menu ended up taking inspiration from books by authors like Haruki Murakami, films by Akira Kurosawa and his many travels around the world. The team of designers, writers and chefs added their own influences to this mix, and the menu design ended up getting refined over time. “We initially thought of having pullouts and postcards, but eventually decided upon a standalone menu, which was creative in its own right. We wanted each page to have an element of surprise, featuring a combination of photos and illustrations. For instance, the pages dedicated to Thai cuisine, for instance, have the feel of a modern travel guide,” elaborates Vishi.

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The most important consideration was that the menu should not be confusing for the guests. It needed to be easy to read and understand. A member of the team came up with the idea of keeping all the food details on the right-hand side, and the creative design elements on the left. “If someone doesn’t have the time to go through all the elements and simply wants to order food, they should be able to do so with ease by focusing on the right-hand side of the page,” explains Vishi. It is not just the menu design but also the dishes that constitute it that have undergone a change. Nearly 40 percent of the dishes, across sections, are new—-from vegan options, reinterpretations of classics and express lunch offerings such as the donburi bowls. "Creating this menu has been a long process, but an immensely gratifying one,” says Vishi.