4 ms·

I get the nostalgic nature of the article, but it feels unfair as it seems to compare the "best physical menu experience" to the "worst digital" one. At its be

I get the nostalgic nature of the article, but it feels unfair as it seems to compare the "best physical menu experience" to the "worst digital" one. At its best, a menu can be a nice leather "book". At its worst, it is a one page plastic menu that has been touched by hundreds of people before you and never cleaned, it is also probably ruined or broken on the corners and in the middle, and has also a lot hand-made corrections to ingredients and prices that makes reading it way more frustrating. At the same time, a digital menu can be easy to navigate (with sections based on first courses, second courses, appetizers, etc.), it can show you the pictures of the food you're going to order and, sometimes, allows you to order without waiting for someone. Even at their worse, I still prefer the digital version as it is more hygienic and I don't have to wait 15 minutes for a waiter if they forget to bring one to the table (and then we also have to share that between 6 people).

Beldin 3y ago
The article is about menus, not ordering. Physical menus can include photos and be easy to navigate. Most physical menus have separate sections for appetizer, side dishes, main course, etc. It's possible to incorporate ordering online into a paper menu (QR code/codes) for folks who don't want to wave at a waiter. In addition, a physical menu does not require you to use data or log on to the restaurant's wifi, is guaranteed not to track your browsing through the menu, can take up far more physical space than available on a phone screen, and won't start the dinner by everyone looking at their phones (and someone forced to help out the technically-challenged party member). Ordering without waiting is nice. Navigating a digital menu is too often a pain. Want to add a drink? That's on another tab, please wait while we load&render, no it's further down, oh you wanted non-alcoholic? Want to change your main? Okay, let's first remove it (load basket), go back to ordering, go back to main dishes... Oh didn't you want that appetizer? Load again and scroll to see if your memory triggers... etc etc etc. sigh.

Beldin 3y ago

The article is about menus, not ordering. Physical menus can include photos and be easy to navigate. Most physical menus have separate sections for appetizer, side dishes, main course, etc. It's possible to incorporate ordering online into a paper menu (QR code/codes) for folks who don't want to wave at a waiter. In addition, a physical menu does not require you to use data or log on to the restaurant's wifi, is guaranteed not to track your browsing through the menu, can take up far more physical space than available on a phone screen, and won't start the dinner by everyone looking at their phones (and someone forced to help out the technically-challenged party member). Ordering without waiting is nice. Navigating a digital menu is too often a pain. Want to add a drink? That's on another tab, please wait while we load&render, no it's further down, oh you wanted non-alcoholic? Want to change your main? Okay, let's first remove it (load basket), go back to ordering, go back to main dishes... Oh didn't you want that appetizer? Load again and scroll to see if your memory triggers... etc etc etc. sigh.