The Paradox of Plenty

You walk into a typical English restaurant – not a pub trying to pass off microwaved lasagne as "rustic" – but a proper place with tablecloths and a wine list that doesn’t feature Blossom Hill. What do you get? Five starters, maybe six if the chef’s feeling whimsical. A soup, a pâté, something smoked, something involving goat’s cheese, and a wildcard like tempura squid to keep the gastropubs from accusing them of being stuck in 1974. Mains? About the same number again. You make your choice, safe in the knowledge that the chef has cooked that particular dish at least once before in their life.

Then there are the specials - something knocked together from yesterday's leftovers. Still eminently edible, but it clears the kitchen of any excess from the day before and saves wastage.

Now compare that to the average Indian or Chinese menu, which reads less like a meal plan and more like the unabridged Encyclopaedia of Everything Ever Conceived in a Kitchen. Hundreds of dishes. Thousands of combinations. A matrix of meats, sauces, spice levels, and cooking methods that would leave Alan Turing weeping into his tikka.

You start with hope. Maybe a nice lamb dish, you think, something with a bit of warmth. Before you know it you’re three pages deep into the chicken section, paralysed by choice, trying to work out the nuanced difference between madras, vindaloo, and phall, which all appear to be a varying scale of "how much do you hate your own digestive system?"

In a Chinese restaurant it's even worse. The dishes have names that offer little in the way of guidance. "Happy Family." "Four Seasons." "Mongolian Delight." It’s not a menu, it’s the itinerary of a package holiday from 1983. You take a punt, end up with something that looks like a crime scene in a puddle of fluorescent orange, and spend the evening wondering if “Special” just means “whatever was left over.”

But here’s the thing. When you’re offering 300 different dishes, you are not, I repeat not, lovingly preparing each one to the same exacting standard as a French chef with one Michelin star and the personality of a prison guard. It is, by necessity, a game of bulk. You sacrifice quality on the altar of choice. The sauces are pre-made. The meat’s been batch-cooked and portioned into Tupperware. There is no artisan stirring a hand-ground masala for your individual order – there’s a bloke in the back with a wok the size of a satellite dish, making enough korma to drown in.

And that’s fine, if all you want is something warm, saucy, and vaguely familiar that you can shovel down while rehashing the same three stories with the same four friends. But let’s not pretend this is cuisine. It’s industrial-scale food production wearing the mask of variety. A culinary hall of mirrors where everything looks different but tastes roughly the same if you close your eyes and add enough lager.

Meanwhile, the English menu – sparse, minimalist, almost aloof – is mocked for its restraint. Yet behind that five-dish line-up is a chef who knows exactly how long to roast the duck and which root vegetable pairs best with disappointment. You may not have many options, but at least someone’s given it a bit of thought.

So next time you find yourself paralysed in front of a menu longer than a Tolstoy novel, just remember: abundance is not excellence. Sometimes less is more, and more is just a steaming pile of ambiguity in a plastic tray. It's fast food at a table - fish and chips while seated.