Yes, and plum pudding and gooseberry pie

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[They] analyzed a database of 6,500 restaurant menus describing 650,000 dishes from across the U.S. Among their findings: fancy restaurants, not surprisingly, use fancier—and longer—words than cheaper restaurants do (think accompaniments and decaffeinated coffee, not sides and decaf). Jurafsky writes that “every increase of one letter in the average length of words describing a dish is associated with an increase of 69 cents in the price of that dish.” […]

Cheaper establishments also use terms like ripe and fresh, which Jurafsky calls “status anxiety” words. Thomas Keller’s Per Se, after all, would never use fresh—that much is taken for granted—but Subway would.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

photo { Maurizio Di Iorio }

related { Guests given the numeral-only menu (00.) spent significantly more than those who received a menu with prices showing a dollar sign ($00.00) }