We changed up our menu structure quite a bit today, removing about 1/3 of the items from the food side. We all agreed that the next step in us improving as a restaurant, is to do fewer things, so we can make each thing we do, continually better.
Now, with fewer dishes to create, we can work to make sure that each one fully showcases the marvelous ingredients that we get from our farmers, and the craftmanship that goes into our artisan foods here.
Plus, hedonic researchers are pretty sure that having a lot of choices actually makes people (you) enjoy things less, and fewer choices make people happier. We’re in the making people happier business.
We hope you like the new, more focused menu. Tonite’s, as always, is here.
Wow like a breath of fresh air. I was just perusing your menu last week and have always been put off by how impenetrable the menu was. But it is so clear now. My I say format the sausage selection a little better, don’t hide “Tandoori Chicken” on two lines.
I hope the narrow selection improves quality. I have always thought of The Linkery as a little hit or miss. Also a question: In my opinion the seasoning has always been a little subtle across the board. More like what I expect to find on a gastronomic temple 12 course tasting menu than a hip gastro-pub. Is this intentional?
I’m glad you like it. Certainly one of the advantages of narrowing the menu to feature our best items is that it reduces the chances for errors, which is good. Inconsistency hasn’t been a huge problem for us, but it has been a continuing low-level issue that we think was related to the structure of our menu. So I expect us to make strides there.
I agree that our seasoning is more like a gastronomic temple than a typical gastropub, and the reason is quite simple: we are using the same world class ingredients as the gastronomic temple, and as with those tasting menus, we want to showcase the quality of the ingredients, and our meat curing, and so on. The seasons need to support the quality of the ingredients we use, not eclipse them. Most other gastropubs are using corn-fed beef, bagged mixed greens and so forth, and those kinds of ingredients don’t have very interesting flavors, so the spice plays a different (leading) role.