I can't tell if you're being sarcastic...?

A QR code opens a link for me in about 5 seconds.

A mobile app takes at least a full minute to authorize and download and install over a cell connection.

A laminated paper menu often takes several minutes for the server to bring around, or worse.

QR codes are literally the fastest thing around.

What are these restaurants that don't have the hostess give you menus? The lowest class ones have menus printed on the little table placemats, middle ones always have a pile of menus the host grabs from when seating you (and calls you Party of X, always), and the highest ones either arrange for wine first, or you're getting a menu from the server right as you're seated by the hostess.

I suppose there's some middle-ground "seat yourself" style ones but I can't recall any recently.

Like everywhere I go in NYC?

Pretty common for restaurants not to have a host, you just ask a waiter nearby and they tell you to sit anywhere you like, and that someone will be by to serve you.

Hosts are expensive and NYC restaurants are often quite small so it's very common not to have them.

Its amazing how slow and inconvenient are America moving towards new technology. In Asia we typically browse using online system and no own fumbled it yet somehow on this tech website, everyone fumbled it.

A good number of problems solved elsewhere are routinely proclaimed as unsolvable in the U.S. Solutions are categorically rejected in the U.S. because implementation is somehow uniquely crappified. The worst form of American exceptionalism.

A lot of this is because things like Line and WeChat haven't take off here.

Must be wonderful having everyone in the continent of asia having a charged phone and cell reception in every restaurant. Us Americans are not so lucky.