Restaurants shorten tasting menus to attract new customers

A sensorial narrative about the concept of a restaurant, based on the ingredients, techniques and creativity offered by the chef and his team, the tasting menu is the perfect format for those who want a complete gastronomic experience. Following a worldwide trend, this style of menu – whose number of steps can exceed 20, making a meal last for hours – is increasingly lean.

Several international restaurants with Michelin stars now offer tasting menus of no more than five stages and at reduced prices, as a way of attracting new customers who normally would not opt ​​for this type of meal, considering it sophisticated and too expensive. In Curitiba it is no different: some chefs have also been compacting the tasting menus of their restaurants into smaller options, served on weekdays and at more affordable prices – preserving, of course, the integrity of their gastronomic visions.

This is the case of chef Igor Marquesini, 31 years old, who has been running his own restaurant for five years, Igor, elected this year as one of the 100 Best Restaurants in Brazil, in the list prepared by EXAME Casual. The house, which works only with tasting menus of 6 and 11 stages, with or without pairing, since the beginning of the year has also been serving a four-course menu (R$ 190), from Tuesday to Thursday, for tables of up to six people.

In addition to providing an opportunity for new customers to get to know the restaurant’s environment at a more affordable price, the abbreviated menu was included with the aim of offering a more agile dinner option during weekdays at Igor. “This approach is perfect for anyone looking for a lighter meal that isn’t as extensive. Consumer behavior is different. It’s not like it used to be, when the most refined restaurants offered menus with 25 steps”, analyzes Marquesini.

To preserve the concept of Igor’s cuisine and also one of the pillars of the restaurant, which is to offer meals with a beginning, middle and end, the dishes included in the four-course menu are the same as those in the longer menus. “The amount of food on the plates is the same, but the difference is in the number of plates,” he explains. In the shorter menu, house breads are served, followed by scallop with chayote and beurre blanc fermented tomato vegan. Then, the main course: lamb shank with cupuaçu sauce and molasses, piagui rice popcorn and red cabbage puree. The meal ends with a dessert of apples, cookies and honey ice cream.

casual without prejudice

Created two years ago with the proposal of presenting a lean menu, with small dishes to share, allowing customers to try several options in a single visit, the ASU restaurant, commanded by chef Danilo Tagikawa, has never had an extensive tasting menu, which goes beyond eight steps.

Even so, in the restaurant’s first year, there were nights when the hall was empty, which forced Danilo to create ways to engage the public more, since the concept of portions to share was not being easily assimilated by Curitibans, culturally very attached to pasta and risottos. That’s when, just over a year ago, he opted for a leaner menu option, now called the Punch Menu (R$135, without pairing), served five times, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. “It’s the reason ASU is open,” he reveals.

Consisting of dishes that change every week, the Punch Menu is a more casual and accessible version of the eight-course Tasting Menu (R$295, without pairing), packing the best creations of the chef and his team. In addition to attracting new customers to ASU, the option for a shorter menu was motivated by a desire by Tagikawa to break down the prejudice that still exists regarding the tasting format. “People still think that the amount of food is small, that they will leave the restaurant hungry and it is not like that. So, for Curitiba, it is an introduction, for people to develop a taste for this type of food”, he explains.

The strategy has been working for both restaurants: at both Igor and ASU, new customers who opted for the shorter menu came back on another occasion to try a longer one. “Few people can afford the eight course tasting menu more than once a month. When there is an option for a shorter menu, the recurrence is greater”, observes Tagikawa, who is planning an intermediate menu, for the weekends, starting in September.

Marquesini’s perception is that customers who opt for the shorter menu at Igor restaurant are more interested in socializing with each other than exclusively in the food. “When someone opts for the more extensive menu, it is usually to celebrate something special or to explore the novelties offered by the restaurant, showing a great interest in the variety of dishes”, explains the chef, who will continue to offer the reduced menu on quieter days, while betting on updating the menu more frequently to encourage a greater return from customers.

The ASU Restaurante is located at Alameda Augusto Stellfeld, 813 – Centro. @asurestaurante

Igor Restaurante is located at Rua Gutemberg, 151 – Batel. @restauranteigor