Restaurant Menus: A McLuhanesque Perspective

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this essay is to celebrate the ordinary and the spectacular in restaurant menus as extensions of our omnivorous eating habits and desires. We start from the assumption that a menu is an artefact with a considerable history and discuss it as a hospitality tool which mediates our eating experience. More specifically, we scrutinize the restaurant menu as a communication tool by submitting it to Marshall McLuhan’s four laws of the media (1988) and argue that menus are gentle forms of perpetuating the omnivore’s dilemma.

Keywords: choice; eating; menu; media; taste; tetrad