Menu Psychology

Having decided to spend a weekend night in to save money and to catch up on some much needed veging out, we decided to order in from our usual Thai delivery place, Authentic Thai. Now we've ordered from these guys several times before, and we always order the usual, pad thai, chili garlic fried rice and some curry dish, so needless to say, I've never really loooooked at the menu. But tonight I felt that maybe it was time to diversify, try something new, and explore the unknown territory of Authentic Thai. So I went into my stuffed to the max menu drawer and dug theirs out.

OK, appetizers...no, too much food. Salad...just had some for lunch...no. Soup...no. Then we came to the next section: "Excellent Curries." Allright, so these people are obviously proud of their food to be boasting that it's excellent. I've tried a few of these, and they're not bad. They're not excellent, but they're not bad. But I'll give it to them for effort; they're just trying to lure people in.



Still wanting to try something different, I read on to the next section, only to find this...



So let me get this straight. They have "excellent" curries, but only "reasonable" house specials. I wondered if they were speaking relatively--that the house specials were just OK, not quite as good as their curries. But that would be culinary suicide, so perhaps they meant something else. Maybe they meant "reasonable," as opposed to "unreasonable." Yeah, that's it. These house specials must possess sound judgement and won't make rash decisions or start arguing with you at the drop of a hat.

Which is why we ended up ordering the usual pad thai, rice, and excellent curry. 'Cause we're unreasonable.