On Menus.

Chicago.

I love restaurants with short, simple menus. Especially when they change frequently.

I'm sure that this is due, in part, to my complete inability to make a quick decision as the what I want to eat. Fewer choices means less to agonize over, so I'm not making my selection at the last possible instant. With the vast menu you typically get at diners or Americanized Asian restaurants, I'm trying desperately to remember all of the various, nearly identical permutations of the dish I'm hungry for.

What becomes aggravating is the choice of what to include in the description of each item. At Asian restaurants, in particular. So often, it seems that they list the vegetables (plus your choice of meat, of course), but with no mention of the actual flavors involved. That's great that it has two kinds of eggplant. But what's in the sauce? That'll dominate the dish and eventually determine whether I like it. If there are two options with the same listing of vegetables, which sometimes happens, how am I to tell the difference? Though a multi-year backpacking excursion through southeast Asia would certainly be informative and a hell of a lot of fun, it's more than a little impractical.

Despite the wealth of choices, I think these menus prevent people from branching out to try new things. If the pad thai's good, and it's always on the menu, why risk something else? And with dozens of choices, how great can any of it be? If the cooks have to keep mental tabs on seventy-plus different dishes, their attention to detail on any one has to suffer, usually to the point where everything tastes pretty much the same.

Small menus, though, mean that the kitchen staff can focus more closely on details. They can make a point to use only what's fresh, what's seasonal, what's local. The menu can actually reflect everything that's used in the meal, if it wants to, and it's a good bet that the servers have actually tasted everything. Plus, you're almost guaranteed to have to try something new every time you go, which has to be a good thing for most of us.

Elegant, expensive restaurants do this all the time, but there's no reason a tiny, cheap place can't. Case in point: Natt Spil. Though you can always get the three-cup chicken or Dave's roast pork sammie, the rest of the menu rotates regularly, to accommodate whatever's fresh. Plus, the beer on tap's reasonably local and seasonal. And it doesn't need to cost a lot to eat a good meal. (Unless you're having multiple drinks. But good alcohol ain't cheap anywhere.)

The two exceptions for the short menu:

1. A good pizza joint, like the Roman Candle, where you pick your pizza toppings. The menu is actually very limited - sometimes, all you can get is pizza. But you can fine-tune your meal in the same way you might ask to have an ingredient left off a salad.

2. A good breakfast/brunch place, the kind with an assemble-it-yourself kind of menu. There are a million different variations, with a few key building blocks: eggs, pancakes, bacon, etc. Though they may have it organized into typical breakfasts, a good place'll let you swap stuff in and out, exchanging fruit for toast, or whatever. You just need to know how you like your eggs cooked.

I may be indecisive, but I can handle that much.