Color Your Menu

“We eat first with our eyes,” the old saying goes, but that has never been truer than it is today. In an era brimming with visual stimuli, colorful, eye-catching photos of menu items have become essential, grabbing attention across social media, third-party delivery services and digital menu boards, while also marketing the bold, in-your-face flavor profiles customers may often expect when choosing these options.

As a reaction to the minimalist aesthetic of the Millennial generation, Gen Z is embracing hyper-colorful, maximalist menu items, from drinks dripping in color to plant-based dishes that showcase a riot of colorful produce like watermelon radishes, multi-hued carrots and pink radicchio. Additionally, with a greater percentage of Gen Z-ers feeling emotional distress compared with older generations,* incorporating mood-lifting color into menu development serves a much greater purpose for this demographic in particular.

“For us, the color of the beer is important,” says Eric Bassett, brewery operations manager at Innovation Brew Works on the Pomona campus of California State Polytechnic University. He notes that beer sales for the college-aged crowd are often driven by visual appeal. “I try to go with a bright color because you see them whipping out their phones and taking a million pictures before they even take a sip,” he adds. For the brand’s Magic School Bus, a fruited kettle sour, both cherry and coconut purées are added for flavor and color.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, beverage director and managing partner Elmer Mejicanos is upping the color game on the menu at Causwells, a modern American bistro. The restaurant’s 30-Minute Souffle cocktail does indeed take a full half-hour to make, which is why the team only serves 20 per night. Prepped in advance, the drink features a combination of tarragon-infused gin, cream, egg whites and cold-pressed citrus. It’s all finished with a honey blood orange cordial poured into the drink at the table, allowing an ombre pink hue to appear in front of the diner’s eyes while a foamy head rises over the rim just like a soufflé.

While the drink menu has arguably been the most colorful section of any operation, modern chefs are finding creative ways to infuse every color of the rainbow into a wide array of dishes. Beige and brown proteins are always candidates for a pop of color in the form of a vibrant condiment or sauce; after all, a hot dog with the perfect drizzle of mustard and ketchup is a thing of beauty. At Bardea Steak in Wilmington, Del., the Hunting with Nonno course on the chef’s tasting menu features a single slice of venison (itself a study in the color gradient, with the medium pink flesh transitioning to the deeper char at the edge) amidst colorful swirls of red, pink, purple and orange, which chef Antimo DiMeo achieves through natural seaweed extractions.

At the mushroom-centric Third Kingdom, a new concept in New York’s East Village from chef Juan Pajarito, the colorful dishes are a tribute to the Wonderland-esque visuals associated with fungi. There’s no greater example of that than the positively psychedelic King Royal Trumpet raviolo, in which a single, bright red raviolo resembling a red-capped mushroom is nestled amidst a vibrant green “forest” sauce made from spinach, broccoli, zucchini and basil. It’s all finished with a sprinkling of edible flowers. The end result elicits the sort of “oohs” and “ahhs” that a colorful dish like this warrants when it hits the table—followed by plenty of picture snapping, of course.

* GALLUP-WALTON FAMILY FOUNDATION, 2023