Hasta La Ideas

Da Enzo, a social-distance-observing restaurant in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, has figured out how to do away with menus. The waitress simply holds up a sheet of paper with a QR code on it.

Diners capture it with their phone, giving them access to the menu.

This is a practice that should persist after the pandemic is over. Printed menus are dumb. When I was a waiter, I hated cleaning them. Managers can’t like having to reprint an entire batch every time there’s a change. And the last time I went to a restaurant in the city, a combination of poor lighting and font size meant I could barely read the damn thing. I’d much rather have it in my phone.

The only downside is that diners without smartphones can’t access them. But post-pandemic, at least, restaurants could simply keep a small stock of menus for such cases.