Justin Lavenue listens patiently as I read aloud a veritable chorus of arguments against the large cocktail menu, gleaned through polling my social media town square. He is the co-owner with Dennis Gobis of award-winning Austin bar The Roosevelt Room, whose ambitious menu spans 85 craft cocktails — and counting.
“I have always thought five or six cocktails, max, is the sweet spot. Ten is a flag, and just kind of annoying.”
“If there is too much going on, the drinks themselves might not feel as focused — it’s a lot for a bar staff to have to memorize and perfect a million recipes.”
“It feels a bit desperate, like they can’t trust themselves to curate their own drinks.”
“I despise lengthy menus of all kinds everywhere but the diner.”
“Feels like they’re all over the place, with no clear vision, that the booze is old, and that none of them are made very well.”
“They’re all accurate,” Lavenue sighs, to my surprise. “If it’s not executed well, they’re absolutely right. And it’s very difficult to execute a large menu for sure and to keep things fresh.”
What constitutes a lengthy menu, though? Some say 30 or 15 cocktails; others say anything longer than a single sheet of paper. I self-identified squarely with the latter the day I took my seat in a deep booth opposite The Roosevelt Room’s shotgun-style bar beneath a formidable menu board. My instinctual reaction on first scroll through three centuries of cocktails is best synopsized
