“Delicious chicken with sauce” sells nothing; “corn-fed chicken, grilled over oak, wild mushroom cream” sells itself. Menu language measurably moves orders — the research is old, the craft is learnable.
The words that work
Provenance: farm names, regions, “our butcher’s” — origin signals quality and justifies price. Method: slow-roasted, hand-rolled, oak-grilled — process is flavor the reader imagines. Texture and specificity: crispy, silky, “48-hour marinade” — concrete beats general every time.
The words that don’t
Empty adjectives (delicious, tasty, amazing — the reader discounts them to zero), exhausting poetry (three lines per dish reads as trying too hard), and untranslatable wordplay that dies in the English version. On bilingual menus, write for translation: concrete words cross languages; puns drown.
Digital menus raise the stakes
On a digital menu you can test descriptions and watch orders shift — the wording stops being taste and becomes data. Ask us to rewrite your ten bestsellers; it’s an afternoon that pays nightly.
English 
Czech