Unlocking Restaurant Menus To Boost Your Culinary Returns

Forbes

07-07-2025

Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and William Holden in '"The Country Girl" ()
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, dining out has gotten more expensive, and the ongoing uncertainty around tariffs is likely to drive up prices even further. As a result, consumers are being more careful about how they choose to spend their money. Even when visiting high-end establishments, diners still want to feel that the cost was worth the experience. But restaurant menus don't have to be a minefield if you know how to navigate them. Here are a few tips to help you maximize the value of your next meal.
When Choosing Where To Dine, Understand Your 'Why'
When it comes to ordering from restaurant menus, there is no single right answer. The outcome will be different for each eatery and each visit you make. Before choosing where to eat, think about what kind of experience you hope to have. Are you looking to grab a quick bite? Do you want to visit the new 'it' place where the scene matters more than the food? Are you craving a particular cuisine? Celebrating a special occasion?
If your main concern is efficiency, it makes no sense to opt for the place with the multi-course tasting menu featuring a soufflé that takes 20 extra minutes to prepare, but you might select that same eatery if you're out for the night with a group of friends. Your decisions should be driven by your needs and desires on that particular day, so it helps to be clear with yourself about what those are up front.
Digital Snooping Will Only Get You So Far
With Google, Yelp and other online tools, it's easy to crowdsource your menu choices, but it's important to remember that you have no idea who actually wrote those reviews. How often do those folks eat out? What's their spice tolerance? Are their dining choices tamer than yours? Do they have a personal axe to grind with the owner? Are they benefiting financially from the restaurant's success? While I do read user reviews and check out online ratings, I tend to take them all with a grain of salt, unless a critique is glaringly and consistently horrifying across a large number of reviews.
Write-ups by food critics are a different story—not because I think their opinions are necessarily more valuable, but because I can get a better sense of their overall biases by reading their other reviews. If I know that Jane Doe routinely loves dishes that require tweezers to plate, or entrees that are so spicy they'll blow a hole through the roof of your mouth, that information gives me a way to assess her opinions and temper them with my own.
For this reason, it can be helpful to identify a few food critics whose tastes tend to align with yours. After you get home from an amazing meal, Google the name of the restaurant you just visited along with the word 'reviews.' See which opinions line up with your feelings about the experience you just had. If you agree with a critic across several reviews, that person's assessments might carry more weight for you in the future.
Choose Dishes You Typically Avoid Making At Home
When you're scanning restaurant menus, look for ingredients or preparations that you aren't likely to tackle in your own kitchen. For example, I love Indian food, but I rarely prepare elaborate Indian recipes at home. The dishes I make commonly reflect the Mediterranean food I grew up cooking and eating with my family, and my larder is stocked with those ingredients. These familiar flavor combinations and techniques are my shorthand, especially on a busy weeknight.
While spices don't exactly go bad, there is a notable difference between a dish that's been made with freshly ground spices and those that are six months old. Although I love Indian food, I don't restock the necessary seasonings often enough to keep them at peak freshness, so rather than make a subpar version of chana masala, I am much more likely to choose it at a restaurant instead.
Assess The Labor Behind A Dish
Naturally, your bill includes the cost of ingredients and front-of-house service, but you're also paying for the kitchen labor, so it makes sense to factor in the complexity of a dish when perusing a restaurant menu. I love a great steak, but it's not much of a challenge for me to purchase a nice ribeye and sear it in a cast-iron skillet at home. I don't need to pay a chef to do that for me.
On the other hand, I am not likely to make beef Wellington from scratch, or attempt a 35-ingredient Oaxacan mole, or spend days planning and executing a cassoulet recipe. If you are willing to do all of these things, I applaud your dedication, but I know myself well enough to be honest about my attention span and energy levels these days.
As you peruse a restaurant's menu, think about how challenging and time-consuming the dishes would be for you to prepare at home. Would it require a spreadsheet and the purchase of specialty ingredients, some of which may need to be acquired by mail order? In that case, you may prefer to let the chef take the wheel.
Decoding The Specials On Restaurant Menus
The Welton Street Cafe in Denver, Colorado (Photo by Joe Amon/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post)
You've done your research, you've settled on what type of experience you hope to have and you've decided on your order, but when your server arrives, they throw your plan into disarray with six simple words: 'We have a few specials tonight.' Boom. Now what?
Beyond your preferences, the answer depends on the context. Are you in a fine-dining establishment where the menu changes frequently, or are you sitting at the counter of a greasy spoon? If the latter, it doesn't mean the special isn't worthy of the name—a good cook is a good cook, and my mother would crush the competition on Chopped, even with the humblest of ingredients—but that 'special' could also be a vehicle for using up leftovers or food that's nearing its expiration date. Does the central ingredient appear in several other places on the menu? If so, what makes this particular dish special? (Don't be afraid to ask your server.)
If, however, the special is built around a unique ingredient that's only available for a short period, I will always give it serious consideration. I rarely turn down a special that features soft-shell crabs because their season is so ephemeral (and because I love them). And if your server fails to mention the price tag for a special, don't be afraid to ask. Some ingredients, like real truffles, can double the cost of a dish, and a reputable restaurant will tell you the price upfront rather than give you a coronary when the bill arrives.
You Shouldn't Need Liquid Courage To Ask About Drinks
A tray of martini glasses (Photo by Mark Peterson/Corbis)
Your server is likely to take your beverage order before you've decided what to eat. If you're keen to pair your drinks with your food, however, it's fine to hold off on ordering a drink until you've figured out your meal choices.
Should you go for one of the restaurant's creative cocktails or stick with a classic? When to order wine? What about the mocktails? The answer is 'it depends.' When faced with a unique cocktail, we all have a tendency to imbue it with the qualities we wish it had, based on menu verbiage. But proportions are everything, so if you hate sweet cocktails, don't assume that the drink won't be cloying just because it contains some yuzu juice. Not all ingredients get listed on the menu, and a heavy pour of simple syrup could easily tip the scales into diabetic shock. Talk to the waitstaff or bartender. They're there to help you make these choices—they want you to be happy so that you'll return—so simplify their job by sharing your preferences.
Similarly, if you're not a wine expert, ask to speak to the sommelier or wine director. Tell them approximately how much you want to spend, what you're planning to eat, and what flavor profiles you typically enjoy. In some restaurants and bars, a classic cocktail may be a safer bet because the liquor elements are standardized. While a bartender's skill matters, you're less likely to end up with a drink you hate if most of the components are shelf-stable spirits. Ask what kind of mixers they use—freshly squeezed juices, high-end tonics, or generic fizz from the bar's soda gun?—and request your favorite brand of liquor (but don't assume the price will remain the same if you do, so be sure to ask).
As growing numbers of customers seek out non-alcoholic options, more restaurants are offering creative mocktails, but the price tags for some of these are considerably higher than what you'd expect for a beverage that has no booze. When restaurant menus list their cocktails at $20 and their mocktails at $18, I'd just as soon order a simple cranberry and seltzer instead on a night that I'm abstaining from alcohol.
Leave Room For Cravings
Even if you patronize the same restaurant repeatedly, there are variables you cannot control. What kind of mood is the chef in today? Is there a crisis in the kitchen that will affect the quality of your dinner? Is the sea bass that was delivered this morning as pristine as what you had the last time you ordered the dish? For better and worse, life is unpredictable. (The ONLY true constant is that you should tip your servers well; they are not responsible for the prices, and they rely on your tips for their income.)
Similarly, your personal preferences may change from meal to meal, regardless of restaurant menus. Some evenings, I order linguine with white clam sauce even though I could easily make that dish at home—because it's what I am craving, or because I love a particular restaurant's version. If a dish is the specialty of the house, that may supersede the fact that it's not labor intensive. Flexibility is key. Let your appetite and budget guide you, but above all, enjoy!