How the AI thinks about your menu
Ask “what’s the most interesting vegetarian thing tonight?” and the AI doesn’t scan the menu top to bottom. It works from three notebooks.
The three layers
| The layer | What’s in it | Who fills it |
|---|---|---|
| The live menu | What’s orderable tonight, at what price, with which options | You, by editing the menu |
| The catalogue | Every dish’s structured facts — ingredients, region, allergens, grape, technique | The system, automatically on every save |
| The narrative | Your voice. Why the dish is here, how to describe it, what to pair | You, when you have something to say |
The first says what you can sell. The second says what those things are. The third says how you’d describe them.
The rule
The narrative is your voice. The catalogue is the AI’s memory. The live menu is its truth-check. Each one protects against a different failure.
Skip the narrative and the AI sounds like a textbook. Get the catalogue wrong — a dish not marked vegetarian — and it confidently misses dishes that fit. Let the live menu go stale and it recommends what the kitchen pulled at noon.
What that looks like
For that vegetarian question, the AI pulls what’s available now, filters to what the catalogue tagged vegetarian, then reads your narrative — “the parmigiana is the chef’s mother’s recipe, we only run it when Friday’s eggplants are good” — and answers like someone who works there.
Take the narrative away and you get: “the spaghetti with tomato sauce — Italian, gluten-free available on request.” Accurate, and forgettable.
Where an hour a week goes furthest
- Your venue’s AI context — 500–1,500 words of philosophy, voice, sourcing, signature-dish stories. Written once, helps every dish and every conversation. Highest leverage by far.
- Descriptions on your signature dishes — the five or ten guests actually notice.
- Internal notes on the dishes with hidden context: substitutions, cross-contamination flags, why you upsell one over another. The AI reads these; the public menu never does.
The other 80% of dishes need nothing. The catalogue carries them.
Related features
- About your venue — the highest-leverage thing you can write
- Writing good dish descriptions — the pattern that works
- Tell it once — where each layer physically lives