Whether you’re perusing a prim-and-proper entree section or straining your eyes to read the fine print at a smoothie bar, there’s no doubt that reading a menu elicits a unique combination of emotions. If your eyes keep bouncing around the page and you feel excited, and somewhat overwhelmed, by its abundance, the menu is doing exactly what it’s supposed to.

“At the end of the day, all food businesses are based on how we feel,” said Steinhardt adjunct professor Steve Zagor, who has worked in restaurant consulting for several decades. “A well-defined experience has a menu that leads you in certain directions. It sounds like propaganda — and to some degree, menu engineering is.”

Of course, some menus’ tactics aren’t trying to fool anyone — at Hamburger America on Houston Street, the menu’s scalloped edges and italicized cursive font emphasizing key phrases (see: the fried onion burger) clearly evoke an old-school diner. But that doesn’t change the fact that menus are a master class in leveraging behavioral psychology to maximize profit. 

This isn’t to say that all restaurants are corrupt machines, nor am I encouraging you to read menus with cynicism. What you can do, however, is recognize that when you step foot into a food business, the menu is actively shaping the way you think, feel and pay — and in doing so, become a more cognizant, menu-literate consumer.

Set the table

Just like a perfectly creased napkin and carefully placed utensils, the arrangement of words on a menu sets the tone for a meal. The top-right region of a menu is “prime selling territory,” according to Zagor. Why? Most diners are right-handed. Ever heard an NYU student raving about the pasta at Little Ruby’s Cafe? The Australian restaurant’s pastas, which make up the menu’s most expensive items, occupy that coveted top-right region. Another placement tactic is the usage of an anchor, or an unusually expensive dish that doesn’t often sell. But that isn’t actually the point — anchors rather serve to make everything around them look cheaper. See French favorite Boucherie’s Plats Principaux: Why buy the $62 grass-fed ribeye when you can save money with the $42 salmon?  

Menus themselves range in shape, size and medium, which is a large reason why food businesses give off different vibes. At Ha’s Snack Bar, which The New York Times named the city’s fifth best restaurant of last year, diners are handed petite menus while the same information looms nearby, handwritten on a chalkboard near the bar. It’s an unnecessary touch — but one that makes the experience feel all the more fancy, fun and artisanal.

Take it with a grain of salt  

You’ve probably seen grocery store products labeled as fresh or natural — words that can legally be attached to any item, fresh or not. As ultra-processed foods take center stage in food politics, diners in recent years have prioritized knowing what exactly is in their food. But in an attempt to cater to that desire, many menus are as buzzword-filled as ever.

Many New Yorkers want to eat locally sourced food and by noting it on menus, food businesses can charge higher prices not just for those ingredients, but for the cultural capital that comes with it. The menu at Greenwich Village’s Springbone Kitchen — which denounces processed foods on its website — details “sustainable honey dijon salmon” and “free-range chicken” to name a few. Dishes like the endearingly named Grandma’s Chicken & Rice balance out these health-focused additions with a sense of warm, albeit superficial, comfort. Spring Cafe Aspen on West Fourth Street offers the optional $4 addition of vegan collagen — 14 g of protein, to be exact — for its smoothies, which are “100% organic.” 

Eat the rainbow, but not all of it

It’s no coincidence that McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr. and Denny’s, to name a few, boast red and yellow logos. While greens, blues and purples are appetite suppressants, warm colors “entice you to eat,” Zagor said. As such, warm-colored walls and menus reflect more than an aesthetic choice — carefully chosen colors are a moneymaker. Portuguese bakery Nata and allergen-free Bub’s Bakery, both of which opened near NYU in the last six months, don bright yellow head to toe. Acclaimed diner Superiority Burger offers a bright pink menu — in this case, using warm colors as opposed to green is a way for the vegetarian restaurant to separate itself. Perhaps New York’s most glaring exception to the rule is Blank Street Coffee, known for its signature mint green walls and cups — but even strong social connotations can be overcome by even stronger branding.

Know your roots

Similar to the proliferation of various buzzwords, the push for more transparency on menus stems from a range of shifting cultural dynamics — whether out of concern for food safety or a desire to calculate nutrient intake down to the gram, more consumers want to know exactly what’s in their food. Cue a wave of food businesses now citing where they get their ingredients from, and thus an influx of yet another category of information provided on menus. No longer is the inclusion of geographic sourcing solely the realm of oysters: Take the iconic Gramercy Tavern, which pays blatant homage to the upstate New York farm in its lunch entree titled Snowdance Farm Chicken. At farm-to-table restaurant Market Table in the West Village, you can start your meal with the presumably locally sourced Brooklyn Burrata.

As supporting small farmers becomes increasingly all the rage, so does disclosing where you get your ingredients from — whether they’re from small producers or not. Walk down University Place to find a sign outside Mediterranean bowl chain NAYA, which boasts beef and lamb from Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors. Sure, it’s based in New Jersey, but the major meat manufacturer also provides for a range of restaurants from Shake Shack to Michelin-recommended Minetta Tavern.