May We Suggest: Restaurant Menus and the Art of Persuasion

It reads like a first draft from a blogger who likes to rant about food. There is no insight in this book and the technical quality of the prose is poor, no, actually, it's worse than that, it is outright bad. It is a dumpster fire.This book's title gives the impression that it's a book on restaurant menus and restaurant persuasion. But really, it reads more like a long diary entry. The author is constantly prattling on about where she ate, what she felt, and whatever other random thoughts pop into her head. She even constantly tells us about what "Jamisin" says who she simply introduces as her "significant other"; it's really quite strange.Numerous times she references an article from a newspaper but doesn't actually give a citation or even the name of the article.This is what her "insight" is on designing the length of a menu. Note how wordy it is without saying anything interesting: "The most rational strategy for all types of restaurants is to simplify the menu, including the production of items, as much as possible while meeting the expectations and preferences of potential diners."This book should have been edited down 50% and the prose cleaned up dramatically and then, at the very least, it wouldn't be abjectly painful

I am very blessed and lucky in both my personal and professional life and I frequently have an abundant amount of free time both to spend with my husband and towards personal and professional goals. I admit that sometimes in my free time I like to view kindlebooks containing material related to my current job for both present and future reference, which I admit my purchase of this kindlebook that is May We Suggest Restaurant Menus and the Art of Persuasion by Alison Pearlman is subconsciously influenced by my interest in information andor writings that I can gather indirectly andor directly relating to my employment and personal life. Additionally, I am logically and intuitively aware that it is outside my destiny to reside in California (i.e. my living in California is not in the cards), rather I was just allowing my creative curiosity and creative intuition to indirectly come into play when I bought this kindlebook. The following are some of the details in this kindlebook that include: part of the authors background includes art historian, the authors visit to Providence restaurant apparently a seafood focused restaurant that has been rated highly in the Los Angeles Times, the author’s experience with Coi in San Francisco, one of the author’s visits to the original incarnation of chef Jose Andres minibar in Washington DC around the 2010 timeframe, an experience that the author had at 800 Degrees Neopolitan Pizzeria a place close to UCLA (University of California Los Angeles), the author’s take on food photos featured for places to include Applebee’s, Dave & Buster’s, Burger King,Taco Bell, etc., author’s reference pertaining to menus at A.O.C. Wine Bar & Restaurant in West Hollywood California, and more.

This is an excellent book. Many of us hold menus in our hands or look at them on various kinds of boards all the time without ever giving it much thought. Pearlman has given those menus a lot of thought and has produced a work that addresses questions of the economics, culture and politics of food and restaurants. However, she does this in a way that is compelling, fun to read and intellectually rigorous.Pearlman has succeeded in writing an academic book that will be valuable to scholars of schools and restaurants, a category to which I do not belong, as well as generalists interested in thinking a little more about restaurants, menus and food. After reading this book, I will never look at a menu the same way again.I should warn you that at times the book will make you hungry, but that is part of the fun of reading the book as she author is clearly somebody who not only writes about food, but enjoys it and brings that to the page as well.

I found the book interesting, and certainly learned much about menus and their impact on choices, but it is hard to fathom that the publisher and the writer did not include images of menus - old and new. The book is about text and image (menus are certainly designed, not just text) and you have to see it to fully understand it. A definite weakness.