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Humayun Hussain focuses on menu presentation

Whether you present your menu as a printed copy or just chalk up the details on a blackboard - or perhaps use both - your customers need to be able to understand it with ease and be impressed, particularly when you include chef's specials.

The menu reflects the pub's personality. If the menu is printed, it must be legible, and if it's written on a blackboard, customers should also be able to view it comfortably from their seat. There are few things worse than a customer having to get up and walk to another part of the pub just to see what the blackboard says.

The easiest strategy may be to place a printed menu on each table, but as few pubs offer a waiting service, this isn't often a viable option.

So customers have to go to the bar to place food orders or access printed menus at the bar where they order their drinks.

Other menu-presentation issues include whether to keep it simple and elegant or to feature bold, colourful images; whether to date the menu to indicate how regularly it changes, and whether photos of dishes alongside dish descriptions would help to attract customers. Your pub's market will be the prime deciding factor.

Henry Davis, proprietor of the William IV, located just off London's City Road, says menu presentation is mainly influenced by practicalities and the importance of being distinctive.

"Our kitchen is quite small, so we are al-

ready restricted on the number of dishes we can feature on the menu," he says.

"Also, we change the menu from lunch to dinner, adding and removing items almost daily, according to seasonal availability. So it makes sense for us to present our menu on plain white A5-sized paper. We print on A4 paper and just cut it in half.

"This practical solution enables us to reprint our menus very quickly. We decided to avoid being too formal, so we avoid using leather or hard plastic covers, which we think rather old-fashioned."

Stephen Bull, joint owner of the Hole in the Wall, Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire, says: "Make the menu work for you. It should draw you in, provoke your curiosity and prime you for the pleasure to come.

Eddie Gershon, publicist for JD Wetherspoon, which has about 670 pubs in its portfolio, says pubs with a high volume of business should be realistic and not over-influenced by trends: instead, they should use menus that are hard-wearing and not too showy.

Eddie says: "All Wetherspoon's pubs have iden-

tical menus, except where pub managers have been granted permission to supplement an à la carte menu with dishes made from locally-sourced ingredients. This exception only applies to areas such as Wales, Devon and Cornwall.

"A plastic-covered menu featuring images of the dishes stands on each table. Customers decide what they want and walk up to the bar to place their orders.

"Each customer is given a table number and advised to take their seat; food is usually served within 10 minutes.

"The high number of customers means that speed is vital, so waiting service isn't provided at the first stage of the order. There is no wastage, and the easily-decipherable menu is customer-friendly, featuring a clear layout of dishes from snacks and starters to mains and desserts," Eddie explains.

Custom-designed menus with oodles of visual flair isn't something most pubs aspire to; nor is an elaborate menu essential for a gastropub. But the menu should create an impression that is strong enough to make it stand out and should also aim to have a more user-friendly appeal than that of your nearest competitor.

Ensure that the menu looks smart, but not so sophisticated that it appears snooty.

"We have received very positive feedback from customers - they have described it as a very concise and unpretentious menu, in terms of the food and presentation," says Henry.

"We don't want to emulate restaurant-style dining, so orders are placed by customers at the bar. I only encourage staff to take table orders if we are having a quiet afternoon."

Camille Hobby Limon is landlady of Islington's Charles Lamb, hailed as one of the best

local pubs to open in the capital in the past year.

She strongly recommends that menu presentation should focus on basics because the quality of the food should speak for itself.

"Our menu changes every day to reflect our emphasis on fresh and seasonal home-made cooking," says Camille.

"Also, the menu is only written on blackboards, one in the bar area and the other in the dining area. Both menus are the same and include the date. This is very practical as it avoids having to type up the menu on the computer and waiting for it to be printed. I'd rather spend that time downstairs with my customers in the pub."

"I write our menu on the blackboards just before serving-time at lunch and in the evening. This encourages interaction with customers, who ask questions about dishes on the menu and how some of them are made. That can be very gratifying.

"Using boards creates a more informal and friendly atmosphere with the customers who come up to the bar to order food. In my view, it's environmentally unethical to print paper menus and throw them away every day.

Menu presentation tips

Size

Whatever anybody says, size is important. While you may think that an enormous A3 menu packed with 70 dishes looks as if you're offering plenty of choice, it will only make people suspicious that most of them are being taken straight from freezer to fryer. Keep it short, concise and on A4 - or even A5 - paper.

Images

There's nothing worse than a snap-happy licensee with a brand-new digital camera. Unprofessional photos of food invariably look awful - especially when the flash has bleached out most of the dish - so leave them off the menu. A discreet pub logo at the top is all you need in terms of images to break up the text.

Fonts

If there's one thing worse than a licensee with a digital camera, it's a chef with a new computer. Gone are the days when menus were written in elaborate, olde-worlde Gothic script. Ancient fonts are illegible and dated fonts often signal dated food. Stick to clean, simple fonts such as Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman or American Typewriter - don't even think about Edwardian Script or Vivaldi.

Layout

The menu is one of your first opportunities to hook your customer and entice them to spend as much money as possible, so make sure that your menus are designed with easy navigation in mind. Keep it simple, ideally laid out in one column, which is divided into the three usual elements of starters, mains and desserts. Including an additional few lines about side dishes is fine, but keep that information together and don't be tempted to break it up into boxes that are difficult to read.

Paper

The same rule applies here as to menus in general - simplicity is the key to success. Unless you are running a three-star Michelin restaurant in France, heavy, leather-bound menus as thick as a telephone directory are dated and just plain dull. Sticking to a single sheet of paper or thin card, in white, cream or something restrained and stylish, is much more appropriate- and whatever you do, don't laminate any of your menus in plastic covers.

Descriptions

When people read a menu, they want to be able to glean enough information to make a clearly-informed decision about what they want to eat. Including a description that reads like the whole recipe is superfluous and off-putting, so keep menu descriptions as brief and clear as possible. Avoid pretentious menu-speak, such as "enrobed with", "resting on" or "on a moat of..."

Spelling

It's a fact of life that some chefs can't spell the names of the food they're cooking, so

make sure you find someone who can. Few things are more annoying than scanning a menu littered with spelling mistakes. If you can't spell gravadlax or pancetta, look them up. And avoid fancy French terms, unless you have the Roux brothers and Alain Ducasse booked for supper.

Boards

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