Italian Fine Dining Menu Template

It’s natural to see a beautifully designed menu and think the design didn’t take much time or effort to produce. The calculations and factors that go into menu design aren’t visible to the untrained eye. It’s only when you start to investigate how to design your menu that you’ll realise it’ll take some effort to produce the optimal menu for your restaurant. Generally, before starting off with menu design, you ought to think out the dishes and group them according to profitability, special offers, etc.

You must also decide on the menu format for your restaurant — you can use paper or digital menus, or both. As a modern restaurant, you should strive towards offering a digital menu experience even if you aren’t ditching paper menus. This is the direction of the restaurant industry, and an increasing number of customers are getting used to the contactless menu option. In fact, any customer who has used a reliable digital menu for some time is unlikely to desire paper menus again.

While curating an Italian fine dining menu design, ensure that the font is legible and colours contrast correctly. Place your hero dishes toward the top, middle or bottom of the menu and use the necessary psychological tricks to draw attention to those dishes, such as price anchoring, discounts, etc.

We’ll provide some detailed descriptions of what we believe are the top three most typical Italian dishes below.

1. Gnocchi Bolognese

Your Italian fine dining restaurant is sure to receive considerable patronage from this dish, provided there are people interested in Italian food in your neighbourhood. The main components of this dish are potato gnocchi and a traditional bolognese sauce. Introducing some cheese as the final additive will tie together the flavours and make the dish tangier.

To prepare, add some olive oil to a heated pan, then introduce your garlic, onion, carrot, and celery. Fry the mix and then add some ground beef, liquid, tomato paste, thyme, rosemary, red chilli flakes, crushed tomato and beef stock. Sir the mix and let it simmer for a while before adding your gnocchi, parmesan, and basil leaves. A picture of this dish would be so great on one of our Italian fine dining free menu templates.

2. Spaghetti Carbonara

Any Italian restaurant menu would be mad to not include pasta dishes. This is a simple dish of pasta and meat that’s a bit tricky to make. However, any chef used to Italian dishes can make it fast without any issues. Although its basic form contains just a few ingredients, a fine dining Italian style restaurant can make it richer with more diverse ingredients. To make this dish, you need guanciale, pecorino romano, eggs, spaghetti, and black pepper.

Start by cooking pasta in water with salt for about eight minutes. Whilst the pasta iis cooking, fry the chopped guanciale. Then, grind some black pepper and add it to the pan of frying meat. Afterwards, crack eggs into a bowl, add pecorino cheese, and whisk the content until they thoroughly mix. Turn off the heat from the cooking guanciale so the eggs do not scramble. Add the pasta to the guanciale, and pour the pecorino and egg mixture over it. Stir thoroughly to get your traditional Italian dish. If the sauce is too thick, add some pasta water.

3. Arancini Di Riso

The main ingredient of this dish is the famous risotto Bianco (white risotto), which needs some making itself. Salt it and add pepper; crack some eggs into it and chop parsley to add to the mix. Add cheese, and with your hands, mix everything. Now, roll this mix into small balls, making dents for your mozzarella. Get your bread crumbs into one bowl, and beat eggs into another. Coat your risotto balls with the beaten egg, then cover them with the bread crumbs afterwards and fry in hot oil. This dish is simple to make, provided you get the risotto Bianco right. It’s also one of the most delicious Italian classics you’d find in any fine dining Italian restaurant.

Let’s study two of the most authentic Italian dishes and how they’re made.

1. Calamari Fritti

Although this is a typical Italian dish, it’s popular in many countries. Some countries use different names for it, and you’ll find plenty of it in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, America, and even Asia. To make this dish the Italian way, you need the calamari rings, eggs, milk, cornstarch, black pepper, cajun spice, garlic powder, parsley flakes, and lemon juice.

To prepare, crack eggs into a bowl, add milk, and give it a thorough whisk. The calamari will get some egg wash before going into the oil pan. Fry some bread pieces and fresh light pepper to go with the calamari. Your fresh pepper also gets the egg wash treatment before cooking. Now, coat your calamari with flour before frying it in hot oil. You can serve this dish with a dipping sauce, or just with a squeeze of lemon.

2. Pappardelle Bolognese

For this Italian dish, you need pappardelle, beef, parsley, black pepper, garlic, stock, onion, tomato paste, other seasonings, and tomato sauce.

Put some oil in a pan and heat over medium heat. Introduce your ground beef and fry it for a while to get rid of all the liquid from the beef. Add your tomato paste and saute the mix for a while before adding your garlic and onion. Next, add the stock to the mix and pour in tomato sauce. Season the stew with sea salt, add black pepper and parsley and let it simmer for an hour.

Cook your pappardelle in water. When cooked, eliminate the water and mix the pappardelle with the sauce. Let it cook for a while, and then serve.

Italian cuisine flavours are derived from a wide range of ingredients, some of which are the most prominent and common. These are extra virgin olive oil, garlic, balsamic vinegar, pasta sauce, oregano, fresh tomatoes, capers, basil, porcini mushrooms, wine, Italian cheese, etc.

We’ve already listed five key Italian dishes above; different variations of these and more are what you may find as a typical meal in an Italian fine dining restaurant. There are many other typical fine dining dishes. Nearly every Italian dish can be offered as a fine dining recipe if you make the right improvements to it. Other recipes include: risotto, pizza, pasta, gnocchi, lasagne, gelato, etc.

Many restaurants lay out their menu in two columns, each containing several dishes. You’d usually find the picture and description side by side, the title (recipe’s name) on top, and the price to the far right of the title. Other menu layouts contain rows of distinct groups. Each group has a main title — the collective name of the dishes therein, e.g., drinks, desserts, sides, appetisers, etc. However, each dish has a name, description, and price — sometimes with pictures. You can lay out your Italian menus similarly.