What a menu scanner should actually tell you
The useful output is not the dish name — you can already read it. The useful output is the three things the menu leaves out: what arrives on the plate, what is likely in it, and whether it is going to be too much for you.
Take "salt and pepper squid". The name tells you almost nothing about the experience. The useful description is that it arrives fried in a seasoned flour and cornflour coating, usually with a dipping sauce that has chilli in it, and it is a starter built for sharing. That is the difference between ordering one plate each and ordering one to start.
The second thing a scanner must do is flag the traps. Fried, offal, very rich, contains shellfish, contains pork — these change a decision, and they are almost never written on the menu.
The dishes that catch everyone out
Some dishes are misnamed in ways that persist across every menu in the world. Knowing these few saves you from the most common bad orders.
| On the menu | What it actually is | Often a surprise because |
|---|---|---|
| Fish fragrant aubergine (yuxiang) | Braised aubergine in a sweet-sour-spicy sauce | It contains no fish at all |
| Caesar salad | Cos lettuce, parmesan, croutons, egg-based dressing | The dressing almost always has anchovy in it |
| Bresaola | Air-dried salted beef, served in thin slices | It is cured meat, not a salad or a grain dish |
| Sweetbreads | Thymus or pancreas, usually fried or braised | It is offal, not bread |
| Bomb Alaska | Sponge, ice cream and meringue, flamed at the table | It is served hot on the outside |
| Chilli crab | Whole crab in a thick egg-thickened tomato chilli sauce | It is a hands-and-bib dish, not a plated main |
Where menu scanners get it wrong
The most common failure is inventing dishes. A menu photographed at an angle has half its text blurred, and a model that guesses will happily produce a plausible dish that is not on the menu. A good scanner drops what it cannot read. If the app gives you a dish you cannot find on the page in front of you, it is guessing.
The second failure is allergen confidence. No app can tell you a restaurant dish is free of an allergen, because the answer depends on the kitchen that morning. Any tool that says "gluten free" rather than "ask" is overstepping. What it can do is tell you where gluten almost certainly is — soy sauce, battered items, noodles, bread service.
The third failure is pricing. If the prices are not legible, they should be absent entirely. An invented price is worse than no price.
How to photograph a menu so the scan works
- Lay the menu flat, or hold the phone parallel to it. Angle is the main cause of unreadable text.
- Photograph one section at a time rather than the whole menu at once. Two clear photos beat one wide one.
- Block the light source with your body if there is glare on a laminated page — a glossy menu is the hardest thing to read.
- Get the dish names and the descriptions in frame. Descriptions carry the cooking method, which is most of the answer.
- If a dish comes back missing, it was probably cut off. Take a closer photo of that section.
The questions worth asking, scanner or not
- Is this a starter or a main? Portion sizes vary more between restaurants than between dishes.
- Is it served cold? Several classic dishes — vitello tonnato, some Chinese starters — arrive chilled, and people send them back expecting hot.
- Is it a sharing dish? Whole fish, large braises and anything served in a pot are usually for the table.
- How hot is the heat, on the restaurant scale rather than the menu scale? "Spicy" on a menu covers a huge range.
- What is the sauce built on? Cream, butter, soy, fish sauce or vinegar tells you more about whether you will enjoy it than the protein does.
I have ordered badly in more restaurants than I can count, and almost never because the food was bad. I ordered badly because the menu assumed I knew what "yuxiang" meant, or whether "bresaola" was going to arrive as a plate of cured meat or a sandwich.
A menu scanner does one specific job: it looks at the menu you are holding and tells you what each dish actually is. Not a review, not a photo generator, not a translation app. That is a smaller job than most menu apps claim, and it is the one that matters when the waiter is standing there.
This guide covers what a good menu scanner should tell you, where these tools get it wrong, and the questions worth asking before you commit to a dish.
Frequently Asked Questions
An app that reads a photo of a restaurant menu and explains the dishes — what each one is, what is likely in it, how spicy it is and which dishes to avoid. It is different from a menu translator, which converts the language rather than explaining the food.