Steve P wrote:I will toss this out there as one of the most impressive Brew-pub menus evvvvver...It's fun, it's quirky, it draws on a regional theme, there's something on it for everyone. It's a little ol' place called Fatheads Brewery that we frequent when we're in Cleveland. GREAT food and award winning beer. We haven't found anything local...yet...that can compare (but we're keeping our fingers crossed).
http://fatheadscleveland.com/Fat%20Heads%20Menu.pdf
Okay, I'll play devil's advocate here, and gimme a little slack because I admitted up front that this is what I'm doing.
The menu looks good. Fun, quirky, I like! On the other hand, in spite of its size, it's not really very diverse. Frankly, it's a great blue-collar/Garage Logic/Guy Fieri DDD bill of fare, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't see much on it that couldn't be competently executed by a short-order fry cook. Okayfine, I'm sure that's their audience, but where (other than in some of the nyuk nyuk nyuk menu names), is the imagination? Where's outside the box?
Then other concern I would have, frankly, is what I shall indelicately call the Ramsi's Principle: If you put 100 dishes on the menu, can you execute them all well? If not, you might be better off to have a menu of 20 items that you can execute as well as, or better than, anyone else. If they can do the 100 items on the menu with equal skill, great, but I could argue that this is because it isn't really 100 menu items at all but maybe 20 variations on pizzas, 50 variations on burgers, and what have you.
There's a place in this world for NASCAR bars and wings-and-burger shops. I don't think that's what AtG is shooting for, though.
But in principle, I like it.
