6 Answers

1. First in show. Many restaurants group their offerings under the obvious headings: pasta, beef, seafood, entrees, appetizers and so on.

2. Menu Siberia. Unprofitable dishes, like a seafood combo plate that require expensive ingredients, and lots of work, are usually banished to a corner that's less noticeable or in a multi-page menu stashed on page five.

3. Visual aids. If you draw a line around it, people will order. That's why many menus box off something they want to promote.

4. Package deals. "It's very unlikely you're going to eat more than two bowls," says Ez. And, as one whiny diner noted, you're like to scarf so many free breadsticks first that you won't have room for all those noodles.

5. Dollar-sign avoidance. Focus groups who've been asked to opine on menus display an acute discomfort with dollar signs and decimals.

6. The small plate-large plate conundrum. A restaurant may offer two chicken Caesar salads, one for $9 and one for $12. You may think that you're getting a break ordering the small one, but, says Ez, that's really the size they want to sell.

7. Ingredient embroidery. Foodie-centric restaurants practically list the recipe for each dish making each ingredient sound ultra-special. (An item is more likely to sell if it dwells on the fact that, say, the cheese came from cows at the Brunschwagergrunt Farm in western Wisconsin or that the organic mushrooms were raised by a former duchess with an advanced degree in microbiology.) You won't find these gambits at every eatery.

Not all restaurant owners plan their menus as carefully as they should. If they did, contends my kid, maybe they would stop placing entrees in the middle of the right hand page, prime menu real estate, because "most people who go to a restaurant are going to order an entree anyway." he says. "That's where I'd put desserts."

I know that other than tricks to attract you to the preferred meals in the menu, colour schemes such as McDonalds and a lot of the fast food chains are chosen carefully, red is meant to stimulate your appetite and yellow is meant to keep you moving (buy lots and go).  But my pet hate is the "all you can eat" usually about the same price as a steak but consists of lots of pasta, bread and all the stuff you can only eat a small amount of before your really full,it costs them next to nothing,give me the steak any day!...odd how a lot of people feel they have a real bargain.

I am sure each of them has their own tricks in their menu's.  I try to look for something I like a lot (when I rarely get to eat out) and try to get something that is not too pricey.

Very interesting food for thought Pamela...Thank you !

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