Smaller, curated menus are the way of the future for restaurants.

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I were wandering around Mexico City near lunchtime and stopped at a small street food stand for a bite. There were two women working behind the counter – one frying up gorditas with chicharrón (we’ll have two, please!) while the other walked us through the rest of that day’s menu. They’d stewed a pot of birria to be made into tacos and served with consomme, if we liked, or we could have tacos containing nopales and cheese.

Contrast this set of options with what we’ve come to expect on a “typical” American restaurant menu, where there may be a taco section but also a burger section, a salad section, an appetizer section and more, all listing multiple options. (Current industry wisdom holds that the sweet spot for the number of options per section is seven – far more, in every category, than was available at the taco stand.)

Chef Nick Balla, of Coast Big Sur, thinks the future of restaurants is more like that taco stand – that smaller menus and curated experiences, rather than the expectation of boundless options, is the way to create a more humane and equitable industry.

“Our consumer culture gave us this notion that success is lots of choices, and you can have whatever you want whenever you want,” Balla says. Restaurants readily adapted, Balla says, adopting the idea that a “customer is always right” attitude is the peak of hospitality.

But a restaurant where customers can order anything from a long list of options to be delivered to their tables for a low price must rely on a large staff or, often, on some level of exploitation. “It didn’t function well for years,” Balla says, describing the practice of back-of-house restaurant workers working for free for hours, regularly, before clocking in. But now, a new generation of workers won’t agree to work for free (or for low wages) and customers want good quality food made with ingredients that are increasingly expensive. It can’t all happen at once – and the model is falling apart.

The way forward, Balla argues, is more restaurants with smaller menus using better ingredients, able to turn out high-quality food with a smaller staff that is better compensated.

And this isn’t just some futuristic vision, the move to smaller menus is already happening. At the high end, think prix-fixe tasting menus and pre-ticketed dinners – these allow a restaurant to curb costs by knowing exactly what they’ll be cooking and for how many people. But there are also examples at a more accessible level: the past years have seen a marked growth in the popularity of fast-casual and counter-service establishments. Beloved for melding the convenience of fast food with better-quality ingredients, fast-casual restaurants typically present a limited menu and stay away from table service, saving money there to instead invest it in good-quality ingredients and worker pay.

This is the model at Coast, where the small, simple menu ordered at the counter (four or five main dishes, plus some grab-and-go snack offerings) changes often depending on the available produce. The response has been good, Balla says.

Small menus can also be found at some more traditional sit-down restaurants like Monterey newcomer Cella, for similar quality vs. quantity reasons. “As long as the menu is constantly evolving and changing it’s ideal to have as little overhead in terms of product and labor,” Chef Ben Spungin says. To Spungin, smaller menus mean a focus on what’s fresh from farmers, “a kitchen staff that can concentrate on the bounty of the season, and a waitstaff that can easily understand the menu.”

And therein lies part of how Balla envisions reeducating guests. In an industry that is all about hospitality, it’s not about telling customers “no,” but about shifting their expectations to something new and exciting.

“My experience has always been that the best dining experiences are when someone is curating an experience for you,” Balla says. It’s not about telling people “we don’t do that,” but about saying “let us cook for you.” And really, what could be more hospitable than that?

For more stories about current food and beverage trends in Monterey County restaurants, pick up a copy of the Weekly’s annual Eat & Drink Magazine, out today.

TAJHA CHAPPELLET-LANIER is the Weekly’s associate editor. Reach her at tajha@mcweekly.com