Off the record, on the menu

The menu is a restaurant’s beating heart - that’s why this food critic steals them.

I used to collect menus. Hundreds every year. I didn’t ask nicely at the end of a meal, which might have suggested to waiters that I was not just another punter but possibly that most loathsome of customers, the reviewer. No, I stole them. I’d put them down my trousers and decamp, walking like a penguin; slip them into a satchel or someone’s handbag; creep off to bathrooms, leaving menu folders tucked behind a cistern. I had a special restaurant reviewer’s jacket – a Barbour with a poacher’s pocket zipped into the back – that was perfect for lifting menus that couldn’t be liberated from their expensive binding or backing boards. Anything to avoid a telephone call next day asking for a menu to be faxed over, or emailed. Anonymity, the holy grail.

Menus are not just a list of food the kitchen can prepare; they are the DNA of any restaurant, tangible proof of the thinking behind a business. For a reviewer, they are the skeleton around which a written assessment can be fleshed out.

The internet, digital photography and a collection bursting at the seams killed the menu-stealing habit. Ironically, the digital age has played a major role in making possible a book devoted to what author Nicholas Lander calls “the world’s favourite piece of paper” and what London chef Bruce Poole calls “any restaurant’s beating heart”.

Lander’s book On the Menu was funded directly by readers through Unbound, a new website and publishing model. Authors share ideas for books they want to write directly with readers. If enough support the book by pledging for it in advance, it is produced. As Unbound’s founders explain: “Publishing this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.”

So I’m assuming On The Menu (Unbound/Penguin, $75) has already broken even for Lander, who writes for London’s Financial Times, is an ex chef and ex restaurateur and is married to top wine critic Jancis Robinson. But who is the book for?

This is one for the industry. For graphic designers. It’s one, too, for hard-core restaurant enthusiasts, the more experienced the better because of its perspective and sense of nostalgia. Some examples go back to the turn of the 20th century, or further. The 1878 menu from Delmonico’s, in New York, for instance, with its “sorbet a la Young America”. The hand-written menu from “Fevrier 1969” at Fernand Point’s Restaurant de la Pyramide in Vienne, France (60 francs without wine). The fact that Harry’s Bar in Venice was charging the equivalent of 80 bucks for tuna tartare in 2002!

Between these reproduced gems are chapters on specific subjects – Origins of the Menu; Planning the Menu; Protecting the Menu, for example – amplified by interviews with luminaries of the cooking world, including our own Peter Gilmore (Quay) and Shannon Bennett (Vue de Monde).

There is a lot of wisdom, advice and example between these covers but the appeal is confined to a small audience that cares passionately about restaurants and what makes them tick. I enjoyed it very much. Read it and you will never look at a “simple” menu in the same way again. But you may steal it.