Presenting the Menu
There are no right or wrong ways to present a menu but it is important that you know the house rules and the kind of service that your establishment is looking for in order to have consistency.
There are a couple of ways to present a menu. If you have a nice menu cover you may wish to present the menu closed so the customer may admire the cover. If this is not necessary then you may wish to present an opened menu for the customer. It is a little bit of extra service.
This can be very helpful when a dessert page is right at the back of a menu and may be difficult to find. The same goes for wine lists with several pages. If a customer has stated, ‘I would like a Shiraz, may I look at the menu?’, then I would advise that you present the list opened to the Shiraz page.
When presenting a menu you should discuss any & all changes to the menu with the guest and any specials that are available. Always ask if there are any questions before you depart the table.
Also, you should…
- Know which side dishes match a particular menu item,
- Know which wines by the glass go well with a dish,
- In busy times suggest easily prepared dishes to ease the kitchen’s load. Things like, ‘the salt & pepper squid is fantastic.’ It is important to know how to assist the smooth running of service. Ask the chef which menu items will help them out in the heat of service. The seating & menu presentation processes present the best opportunities to control when & what orders are taken.
- If the specials need to be pushed to ensure there is no wastage or we need to move something, then say your lines to yourself out loud before attempting to sell at the table or even write them down for your own benefit (this can aid in visualising the special when at a table). Ideally the kitchen will prepare a special for the staff to look at and taste before service, which makes it a lot easier to remember the components of the dish and therefore it will be more likely that many specials will be sold.
- Ask yourself, what is my favourite dish & why? What is my favourite wine & why? Always talk from the heart when recommending. Visualize what you are saying and help your guest see and feel what it is you see & feel about a dish or a particular wine.
An un-named person (Lee Middendorf) once told me a particular wine made him feel like he had just covered himself in baby oil and dragged himself through an Olympic sized swimming pool filled with naked women. Man have I used that line a lot since then! It could so easily be a controversial statement but it has never caused offence. Even the ladies tend to smile!
