The Process

Ordering from a menu can be hard. There is the matter of overcoming the paralysis by analysis that is brought on by very many choices. One must discard many choices right off the bat by seeking out something more than food that merely seems good. I luckily am very good at introducing other factors, of which cost is merely one. Most of them are less reasonable factors than that. Cost is a very useful thing to consider.

It's nice when the cuisine derives from a culture whose language I am especially inexperienced at pronouncing. That way, I can discard as a possibility any food item I am unsure of being able to pronounce correctly. It feels important to me that I look smart and not stupid in such situations, and this feeling helps me further winnow down the options before making my final decision. It may not matter to other people, but it need not.

If any menu item is overly boastful, I toss that out right away. Pancakes decreed to be world-famous are not an option, nor is anything proclaimed to be the world's best. That is a really fast way to turn me off the whole restaurant, and you'd better hope I don't notice it before I come inside and start to feel committed. I'm probably not going to really enjoy whatever I order, but I know I won't order those braggadocio-prone food items.

I'm not about to ask for an employee's opinion, though it would be useful, so I engage in a lot of conjecture about what is likely to be delicious or authentic. These are all important to me, but not so much so that I can overcome social anxiety and engage a waitress in a line of questioning. I try to guess if a food item is likely to be handled well by the place I'm in - this likelihood being based on the authenticity of the food in the setting, as well as the general difficulty level of the item.

That amounts to most of the decision-making process, although there's always more to it. To convince you that it works, here is an example of a successful execution. Friends and I went to a French bistro. Much of the menu being in French, it was very easy to eliminate much of the offerings from consideration on the basis of pronunciation. Regrettably, nothing claimed to be the best or to be especially notable.

Left with a number of menu items that were cheap enough, humble enough, and easy enough to pronounce, I was in a fair position to make a choice. I did not want anything sweet, and anything outside of the brunch menu was either too expensive or probably insufficiently ample. Much of the brunch menu's savory items were too hard to pronounce or seemingly inauthentic. That left the Omelette Figaro, which seemed to fit the bill tolerably every which way.

I found myself with just what I was hoping for, and not everyone seemed able to say that. I thus concluded that I had made a very wise choice. That's not to say that I'm going to go and hit up a lot more French bistros on the basis of my judgment. I might do it in the interest of becoming a more mature human being (since that aspiration is hindered by my typical diet), I'll admit. I would like to bone up on my pronunciation first.