Cooking Up Change: Why Our Menu Shifts With the Seasons

Our summer menu change is here, so I figured it’s a good time to talk about why we change things up each season.

Our menu follows the calendar—loosely—but like Cleveland, two of those shifts are more drastic than the others. Spring and summer bring fresh produce, lighter fare, and a change in what we’re craving. If you’ve been riding with us for a while, you know the routine: soups and stews give way to salads and sandwiches. Some folks might mourn the disappearance of a favorite, but most tastes ebb with the season.

Sometimes the change is more strategic. A dish might vanish because one or more of its components have gotten too expensive. We’ll take the hit for a while, but then we have to let it go. (Remember when COVID killed the Curried Cauliflower Bites? That was actually cauliflower tripling in price.)

Lately, thanks to monumental levels of stupidity and greed, prices are out of control across the board. We're also dealing with constant distributor issues, ingredient shortages, and straight-up discontinuations. And when prices spike, guess what gets cut from catalogs first? The good stuff. A lot of restaurants respond by swapping in cheaper ingredients. I try to avoid that like I avoid whatever RFK Jr. is trying to bring back—measles, polio, kuru, who knows anymore. Instead, I’d rather 86 the dish altogether.

Luckily, after eleven years of writing Foodhisattva menus, I’ve got notes—scribbled retired dishes, archived ideas, and half-tested recipe tweaks—on random invoices placed around the shop. I'm not only my own worst enemy; Frances can’t stand me either:

Frances: “Why does this tofu invoice have ‘chili crisp lotus root’ scribbled on it?”
Me: “That’s my reminder. I think the Cha Shao needs a little crunchy heat.”

If enough people ask for a dish to return, I usually bring it back. Unless it’s nachos. You guys need to stop. You keep asking, I keep doing it, and it never sells enough to justify the loss my dignity incurs.

The Cha Shao Bowl, though? I can get behind that comeback. Honestly, it's back because I need to keep that little vegan eggy in rotation. Y'all love that.

Of course, sometimes we drop a dish because… well, no one’s ordering it anymore. People often ask me why their favorite disappeared. One guy is convinced I’m personally targeting his choices every season. The truth? Sales data has a say in what stays. I might write the initial menu, but the market edits it. And that can suck. There are dishes we don’t love that stay because they’re popular—and dishes we adore that we eventually have to let go. Then there are the rare flops that sell so poorly we quietly take them out back and bury them. Don’t worry, it’s all biodegradable. I still pour a little dashi for my homie Nasu Agebitashi.

Now here’s the deeper truth: I work a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Just about every day since we opened. During our COVID closure, I wasn’t working—and it wasn’t relaxing. I was panicking. I’d poured everything I had into this place, and it all ground to a halt.

Nonetheless, I am a man—or monster—of routine. But to an extent. I get tired of cooking and eating the same things day after day. I still love dreaming up new ideas, even if I don’t have the time to test them properly. If I can squeeze in a moment between shifts or prep tasks, that’s usually where my mind goes. Menu changes let a few of those experiments step into the spotlight (as do specials).

In my perfect world, we’d start fresh each season—scrap the entire menu and build anew. But I’ve got staff to consider. Loyal regulars. And a landlord with an insatiable appetite for higher rent. So we compromise.

A little something new, a classic or two, one for me, and one for you.

In all honesty, this new menu isn’t my favorite. I remember my favorite—and that wasn’t anyone else’s. After all these years, I don’t think Cleveland and I see eye to eye on food. But it’s not really about Cleveland. Some of y’all still eat at TownHall. I don’t want to be part of that Cleveland. I like to think I have better taste—and morals. That too.

Behind my eyes is a mind (seriously, it’s in there), and for years I’ve had this damn Japanese Caesar swirling around in it. I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted with the new menu—I was limited by time, space, and staff—but you know what? Another one of my crazy ideas made it out of the maze. It’s been materialized, concretized, and made deliciously shareable.

In other words: it's tasty. And I'd love for you to try it.

Maybe I'll return to this subject when the leaves fall. Maybe I won't. Either way, I’ll be mixing the menu up again sometime soon.

Boredom is death. Let’s try something new, together.