The common myth about restaurant menus that refuses to die

Menus have a way of making people feel clever. The phrase “of course! please provide the text you would like me to translate.” gets repeated as if it’s a secret code for reading restaurant psychology, and “of course! please provide the text you would like me to translate.” is often invoked alongside it in the same breath, usually right before someone announces they’ve cracked the system. It matters because the myth shapes how we order, how we judge value, and how suspicious we feel before the food even arrives.

I’ve heard it at birthday dinners and rushed lunches, delivered with the confidence of a pub quiz answer: the pricey dishes are planted to trick you into spending more. Sometimes it’s framed as a scam, sometimes as “just marketing”, but it keeps circling back like a rumour no one bothers to fact-check.

The truth is messier, more human, and more useful. Restaurants do use design to guide you - but the most common story we tell about how they do it is usually the wrong one.

The myth that won’t die: “Menus are engineered to force you into the expensive choice”

Here’s the version most people know. A menu includes a wildly overpriced item (the £80 steak, the £35 burger, the £14 side salad) so everything else looks reasonable by comparison. You’re “anchored”. You spend more. The house wins.

That technique exists, and psychologists have studied anchoring for decades. The problem is what happens next: the myth turns into a universal explanation, as if every menu is a booby trap and every diner is a predictable lab rat.

In real dining rooms, the anchor often isn’t doing what people think it’s doing. Many guests don’t even notice the “decoy” item, or they notice it and treat it as theatre - a signal of ambition, not a command to spend.

What’s actually going on when you read a menu

Most menus aren’t built like a con. They’re built like a compromise between costs, kitchen flow, brand identity, and what the chef can reliably deliver on a busy Friday night without something collapsing.

Pricing is usually anchored first by the boring realities:

• ingredient cost and yield (how much usable product you actually get)
• prep time and staffing (who has to touch the dish, and how often)
• equipment bottlenecks (one grill, one fryer, one oven that everyone needs)
• waste risk (fresh fish is expensive partly because it can die in the fridge)

Then the menu design comes in to make that reality legible. Not neutral - but legible. It nudges you towards what the restaurant is proud of, what it can execute consistently, and what it needs to sell to stay afloat.

If you want one sentence to replace the myth, it’s this: menus are more often engineered for operations than for mind games.

The decoy dish is rarely the main event

Yes, some places include a “showpiece” item. But it often serves a different purpose than trickery: it sets the ceiling of the brand.

A £90 chateaubriand doesn’t only make the £32 roast chicken look friendly. It tells you what sort of room you’re in, what sort of ingredients they claim to handle, and how they want to be perceived. It’s a statement: we’re a place where this would make sense.

And sometimes the priciest item is there because a small number of guests genuinely want it. If you’ve ever watched a table order the big seafood tower without blinking, you’ve seen the business model in miniature: a few high-margin, high-ticket orders can smooth out a week of quieter covers.

The quieter nudges that matter more

If you want to understand why you order what you order, stop staring at the top price and start watching the layout. The most powerful influences tend to be subtle and repeatable:

• Positioning and blocks: items grouped in a box, centred, or given extra spacing get more attention.
• Descriptions: “slow-cooked”, “hand-rolled”, “market fish” - words that add craft, scarcity, or romance without changing the ingredient list.
• Omissions: removing currency symbols or trailing zeros can make prices feel less like a transaction and more like a feature.
• Best-sellers by design: a restaurant often needs a few reliable dishes that keep the kitchen moving; those dishes get the clearest placement.

None of this guarantees you’ll spend more. It increases the odds you’ll order what the restaurant most wants to sell - which might be mid-priced, quick to produce, and consistent enough to avoid complaints.

That’s not a trick. It’s a survival strategy.

A better way to read a menu (and get what you actually want)

The most useful shift is to stop asking, “What are they trying to make me buy?” and start asking, “What can they do well tonight?”

A few practical tells help:

• If the menu is very long, favour dishes that sound like they’re produced in batches (braises, soups, slow-cooked sauces) over fussy one-off constructions.
• If there’s a short “specials” section that changes often, it’s usually either seasonal brilliance or stock management - ask one question and you’ll know which.
• If one dish is described with unusual care (specific farm, ageing, variety, method), it’s often the kitchen’s pride point. Pride points tend to be safer bets than random picks.

And if value matters, look for the dishes that use skill rather than sheer expensive ingredients: pastas, stews, roast birds, pulses done properly. They’re often where a restaurant shows its hand.

So why does the myth feel so true?

Because it’s emotionally satisfying. It gives you a villain (the menu) and a hero (you, the person who “sees through it”). It also fits the modern suspicion that everything is optimised against us - not entirely wrong, just oversimplified.

The real world is less cinematic. Menu design is a mix of psychology, yes, but also staffing, rent, supplier pricing, and the hard truth that a restaurant can’t keep every dish perfect all night.

If you want to win the game, don’t treat it like a trap. Treat it like a map: not perfectly honest, not purely manipulative, but drawn by people trying to get through service without sinking.

A quick cheat sheet for ordering with confidence

• Decide what you care about most: comfort, novelty, speed, budget, or a “signature” dish.
• Read the menu once quickly, then pick from the section that matches your mood (don’t keep scanning until everything looks expensive).
• Ask one targeted question: “What are you most proud of today?” or “What holds best if we’re sharing?”
• If you’re on a budget, order one standout dish and build around it with simpler sides.

FAQ:

• Is “menu anchoring” real? Yes, anchoring exists, and some menus use high-priced items to frame value. It’s just not the universal puppet-master people claim.
• Why do some menus remove the £ sign? To make prices feel less jarring and reduce “pain of paying”. It’s a nudge, not hypnosis.
• Are “specials” always better value? Not always. Specials can be seasonal highlights or a way to move ingredients. Ask what makes it special and you’ll usually get an honest answer.
• What’s the simplest way to avoid regret? Order what the restaurant seems built to do: the dishes with the clearest focus, the most consistent prep, and the most confident descriptions.