How we write a dinner menu

A dinner menu should be short enough to read standing up.

We start with what is arriving that week: fish we can get clean, meat we can age or braise properly, vegetables that still taste like themselves. Then we cut. If a plate needs a paragraph of explanation, it is not ready.

What stays

Bread, a green salad, one grilled thing, one slow thing, a tart. The rest moves.

What does not

We do not keep dishes as souvenirs. If the lamb is better than the pork this week, the pork waits.