Menus with a quirky twist

In 2016, a year before its 75th anniversary, Delhi's heritage eatery United Coffee House launched United Coffee House Rewind – a cafe format that was to connect with the younger generation while offering plenty of memories and signature dishes for the older generation. Alongside the decor and presentation of the food, the menu too underwent substantial changes at these cafes. While the former features a hardbound menu with simple off-white sheets bearing the name of its dishes in black and peanut brown colour and a border with motifs at its four corners, the newer menu cards were colourful featuring midnight blue, mustard yellow, an emerald green and white, and carry several pictorial elements like a scooter, stainless steel ka dabba, old microwave with three knobs on its right-hand side, typewriter, a handheld Japanese fan, an alarm clock and a trumpet. "The cafe menu has our signature dishes, but alongside there are different cuisines which are easy and casual," says Akash Kalra, Managing Director, The United Group, who describes quirkiness as an essential element when it comes to cafes and their menus and rightly so.

Similarly, Social Offline, a cafe and co-working space, has a quirky menu styled like a tabloid-style newspaper and made from recycled paper. Customers can write on it, spill their drinks on it, leave compliments, take it home or simply order their food. According to Chef Shamsul Wahid, Group Executive Chef, Smokehouse Deli and Social, "about 1,500 menus are consumed by the people at each Social cafe every month."

Another cafe whose menu bears several of these quirky elements is Cafe Delhi Heights, a chain of about 15 mid-segment restaurants, with Delhi as its theme. The menu has images of iconic historical sites and monuments like Lotus Temple and Qutub Minar, wall graffiti, shots of markets in the evening hours, auto, bus, taxi and of course, the Delhi Metro. The menu also has interesting text that will be familiar to Delhiwallas. For instance, imitating the alteration done on the boards at historical sites, a board has every 'don't' turned into 'do' and reads, 'Park mein gandh failana mana hai. Park mein sharab pina & juwa khelna mana hai. Park mein ashleel harkat karna mana hai.' which loosely translates to 'littering, drinking, gambling and indulging in obscene acts in the park is banned'.

"There is a gap of about 20 minutes between you placing your order and your food arriving, the menu should be such that it holds the attention of people. People won't remember the entire menu, but bits and pieces, probably a graffiti or a joke. It shouldn't just be information, it should be something that creates memories for people, which they feel like sharing with the world," says Sudip Bhattacharya, the brand consultant, who is the brain behind the menus of Cafe Delhi Heights. His brief, he adds, was that "the menu should be such that people steal it". Youngsters, he says, are the ones who pay attention to the design of a menu and love its humour and fun aspects.
With theme-based restaurants proliferating, their menu cards reflect the same. For instance, in NH44, a cafe in West Delhi's Rajouri Garden, the menu is attached to a truck-shaped structure. Across its pages, a truck travels a road traversing India's north-south axis, from Srinagar to Kanyakumari. Similarly, in Mumbai, Leaping Windows, a cafe themed around comics, has a comic book-style menu card titled The sacred books of food and evil – Vol 1 with many full pages featuring graphics.

While experiments are good, it is equally important to understand your brand. So, while approaching the menu, focus on two elements – design and information, which leads to sales and customers engage with the brand. "When you look at the McDonalds, it's designed for speed. But, Cafe Delhi Heights will be for people to spend more time and engage with the brand. So the purpose of the design is critical not only the beauty of the piece," says Bhattacharya and cautions, "One should refrain from going overboard with the design or text, the menu should be self-explanatory."