When more choice makes a menu harder to buy from

Menus usually grow for good reasons: a request here, a seasonal idea there, a dish nobody wants to remove. Over time the structure that once helped customers decide quietly stops working.

Every additional option adds a small amount of decision effort for the customer and a real amount of operational effort for the kitchen — preparation, stock, waste, consistency and training. Customers rarely say the menu is too long. They simply take longer, ask more questions or default to the safest dish.

A menu should make it easy to answer 'what is this place best at?'. Where that answer is difficult to find, the strongest dishes end up competing with the least distinctive ones for attention.

Reduction is not automatically improvement. The useful question is which dishes carry the identity of the business, which earn their place commercially, and which exist only out of habit. Evidence should decide the order of those three.