Restaurant Review: Sage restaurant, Cork

A graphically well-designed menu suggests cheering possibility like a well-dressed Christmas tree levitating on a bed of beautifully-packed gifts, some labelled with your name in generous Auntie Betty’s clear, strong, knowing hand. 

A menu, one printed on decent paper, that shows some basic understanding of how typography can declare ambition, communicate ethos and, very occasionally, sing we’re-in-the-right-place can make even a jaded diner sit up and take notice. A clear, thoughtfully presented menu — the document, not the food — can hint or even scream that your hosts know what it takes to do things properly.

Unfortunately the converse is equally true. Those grease-flecked Magna Cartas of life-sapping tat, the ones that don’t know a pica from a point are usually harbingers of spicy chicken wings — or Buffalo wings if pretension has outstripped mediocrity.