Spanish Fine Dining Menu Template

Menu design goes beyond listing your dishes on some glossy paper or an online app. If you knew the different factors that come together to make a hot-selling menu design, you’d probably give it a lot of time and research. Before you begin to create a Spanish fine dining restaurant menu, it’s a good idea to identify your hero dishes — those that’ll give you the most profit. Arrange these dishes in order of their profitability, especially if you intend to print out the digital menu on paper. The arrangement of dishes on your menu influences customers’ selection.

Whether using a hard or soft menu copy, your hero dishes ought to appear close to the top, around the middle, and at the bottom left side of a paper menu. Make some decorations around the dishes to attract your diners’ attention. You can also write off some price percentages, practise manipulative pricing, embolden some text, use better pictures, or tag your special dishes as popular options. Ultimately, do whatever is necessary to draw attention to those dishes, but don’t be too overt in your persuasion; otherwise, few will be persuaded.

Running a typical restaurant is one thing, but running a fine dining restaurant is a whole new world. As a Spanish fine dining restaurant, your dishes ought to exude originality and luxuriance. There are some incredible Spanish restaurants that have been awarded Michelin stars.

Here are the three most common Spanish dishes you can modify to create an exclusive menu for your fine dining restaurant:

1. Albondigas in Tomato Sauce

This Spanish delicacy will look great on any well-designed Spanish menu template. Its ingredients aren’t many, but the preparation can be a bit tricky. Before making this dish, prepare the following items: minced meat, eggs, bread crumbs, white pepper, salt, parsley, flour, tomatoes, onions, and olive oil.

The first step is to mix your minced meat with eggs, water, and some seasonings. Roll the minced meat into meatballs and fry in oil until golden. Then, make a stew of tomatoes and onions and drop the meatballs into the stew. Cook for 25–30 minutes, and your dish is ready to serve. It can be served cold or hot.

2. Paella (Spanish Rice)

Every family in Spain knows this dish. It’s the kind of dish you can eat any time of day and get the energy you need for many hours of activity. The main ingredients are artichoke, green beans, broad beans, chicken, rabbit, Spanish saffron, tomatoes, paprika, and garlic.

Your first step is to fry the meat in oil and season it with salt. Add the onions and artichoke to the meat pan. The next step is adding garlic, smoked paprika, and tomatoes to the pan. Also, pour some chicken stock into the pan and bring it to a boil. The rice should also go into your pan and cook thoroughly, after which you can take a picture of the dish to use during your Spanish fine dining menu design process.

3. Rabo de Toro (Spanish Oxtail Stew)

This is one of the most authentic Spanish dishes. To make it well, some ingredients, such as the onion, have to originate from Spain. Ingredients include oxtail, barley, olive oil, cloves, flour, salt, onion, carrot, garlic, tomatoes, and a few other ingredients.

Start by cooking the components that take longer to cook — oxtail. First, coat it in dry flour and fry it in oil. Remove the meat once cooked and fry the onions, garlic, and carrot. This should take about 10 minutes before you add the tomato and spices. Put the oxtail back into the pot and slowly cook your stew for about 3.5 hours. This is another dish that can be served hot or cold.

Every Spanish fine dining restaurant has its unique dishes curated by its chefs. Still, the underlying dishes for these luxuriant meals are the traditional Spanish meals; what makes them different is the quality of service and novel ingredients introduced.

Here are the three most authentic dishes you’re likely to encounter in a Spanish fine dining restaurant:

1. Fabada (Broad Beans and Pork Stew)

The ingredients for fabada include beans, onion, garlic, bay leaves, sweet paprika, chorizo, morcilla sausage, pancetta, and meat (usually ham and bacon). This dish takes time to make because of the beans and meat. So, you ought to soak the beans a day before cooking it, so it cooks faster. Start by cooking the meat in water. Then, cook your beans together with onions, garlic, and paprika.

Transfer the meat to your bean pot and cook for an hour before adding more water to the pot. Blend your onions and introduce it into the pot. The broth should be ready after a few more minutes of cooking and the possible addition of salt and water. The many free menu templates available on Menuzen are an excellent means of showcasing this dish to your diners.

2. Tortilla de Patatas (Spanish Omelette)

Although relatively easy to make and requiring only a few ingredients, this dish is a top favourite amongst the Spanish. To make it, you only need potatoes, olive oil, eggs, onion, and salt. Shallow or deep fry your sliced potatoes, strain the oil, and set the fried potatoes aside. Separately sweat the onions by cooking on a low-medium heat for around 10 minutes. Mix beaten eggs in a bowl with the onions and potatoes.

Pour a fair glug of oil into a large pan and bring it to temperature. Next, pour your beaten egg mixture with some salt into the pan and cook for about four minutes. Gently flip and cook for an extra minute and serve as a snack, a tapas plate, or even a main dish when coupled with green salad and a baguette. You can then proceed to take a picture of this fabulous dish for placement on your Spanish fine dining menu template.

3. Empanadas (Spanish Pastries)

The ingredients for this Spanish dish include potatoes, vegetable oil, eggs, Spanish tuna, red pepper, pine nuts, parsley, flour, and water. Your first step is to peel the potatoes and fry them in oil for about 10–12 minutes. Then, boil the eggs for about 10 minutes. Add a can or more of Spanish tuna to your potato bowl. Also, add your hard-boiled eggs, red peppers, pine nuts, and some parsley. Season everything with sea salt and black pepper. Mix some all-purpose flour and salt, then add the oil used to fry the potatoes and water, forming a dough from the mix. Make pastries using the dough and your mixture of potatoes, eggs, etc.

The key flavours in Spanish foods are several and include those obtained from the following ingredients: chilli pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, nutmeg, paprika, saffron, bay leaf, oregano, parsley, rosemary, thyme, sage, adobo, marjoram, paella spice mix, lemon, salt, garlic, olive oil, and sherry vinegar.

A typical Spanish fine dining meal is mostly the original or improved version of the traditional Spanish recipes — we’ve discussed six key ones earlier. There are dozens of typical Spanish foods you can be creative with and make into a fine dining dish. Spanish cuisine is famous for: paella Valenciana, patatas bravas, gazpacho, pimientos de padrón, fideuá, churros, croquetas, piquillo peppers, cured meats such as Iberico ham among many others. Often these are served as small Spanish tapas plates alongside some delicious Rioja or other Spanish wine.

Your menu’s layout will largely depend on the variety of dishes to be displayed. If you have many dishes, say 32, a two-column menu would be the wrong layout since the menu would be too long and not pleasing to hold and examine. One way to design a menu to contain many dishes is to divide them into categories such as snacks, drinks, sides, specials, staple foods, etc. You can also choose to use pictures or make it a text-only menu. In all, one mistake you shouldn’t make is using an awkward layout that customers are likely to dislike at first glance.