http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Confidential talks about refrigerator space and other constraints common to modern restaurants. Whenever you order that chicken that's on the menu together with shrimp, lobster, steak, ground beef, pork chop, pork loin, tuna, turkey, salmon, tilapia, etc., you risk ordering something that's been re-frozen multiple times, stuck in the back of the fridge (the more exotic it is, the higher the chances are that it's been there for a while, alligator kebabs and ostrich burger patties least likely to be fresh), and handled multiple times by line cook's hands while he reaches into the fridge to retrieve stuff for other customers.

Just to clarify, it sounds like you're suggesting that a larger menu will have less-fresh food. That makes intuitive sense but confused me at first.

Yeah, sorry about the verbosity.

What works to give a lot of variety is in a place like most chinese restaurants, where there are N things prepared M ways and you can get any of NxM dishes.

this is really against what most restaurants should try to do. I'd rather have a place make 10 dishes very high quality than 50 ok dishes. With a large menu its very hard to provide quality and consistency.

Is this statement based on your experience working in quality focused restaurants?

this is my experience from working in many restaurants (not as a cook) along with being a foodie. While food tastes differ and is subjective, all you'd have to do is compare the best restaurants menu with a food buffet.

There are hundreds if not thousands of amazing dim sum restaurants in Hong Kong and Saigon that prove you wrong.

Beyond that.... as a former back of the house restaurant employee (10+ years, Cordon Bleu, blah blah) I can tell you that the only time fewer dishes is a guarantee of higher quality is when the staff isn't skilled.

You can go through several lists for the top 50? restaurants in the world will prove you wrong. Not one is chinese and I doubt any serve the traditional dim sum style with the carts rolling around.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/worlds-50-best-rest...

I find it pretty common given a list of foods that I like, the one with a good picture is the one I'll most likely order. Having more pictures may or may not benefit the restaurant though...

Use of a few pictures now could lead customers to buy a higher profit item, or an item that is much easier to keep in stock in large amounts.

Use of pictures for all items means that the customer will likely expect the food to the table looks like the item in the picture. This could cause some issues with different cooks or item substitutions.

trustworthy, high-quality pictures lead to conversion.

untrustworthy, high-quality pictures lead to customer dissatisfaction.

regardless of my arguments, i suggest restaurants not lie to people, either by NOT including photos, or including photos of stuff that ISN'T what they're going to get.