Truffle and game season menus: the limited-time card
How to design a short game or truffle menu that feels scarce without shouting: dates, a tight list, honest supplements, and a reprint plan when the delivery fails on Thursday.
Game and truffle cards fail in two opposite ways. They either look like the house menu with "wild boar" pasted over the pork, or they dress up as a luxury event and then cannot reprint when Friday's tuber does not arrive. A limited-time card is a short, dated object that can die on a Sunday without embarrassment. This article is about the list, the type, the supplement, and the reprint habit that keeps you honest when the woods do not cooperate.
Scarcity is a date, not a gold border
Put the window on the card: "Game, 12 October – 30 November" or "White truffle, while we have it, from 8 November". That line, in the same type as a section heading, does more work than a foil stamp. Guests understand they are not looking at January. Staff understand which stack to pick up. Next year's file cannot be printed by accident.
Do not invent a second brand for six weeks. Same logo, same type, same board as the house card, one shift darker in the palette if you must (a deeper green, a warmer cream). A black-and-gold truffle card that looks like a different restaurant will confuse the regular who came for the usual table. Luxury here is the product, not a costume around it.
A short list, or a short insert
Six to twelve dishes is a seasonal card. Twenty is a rewrite of the house menu and you will not update it when the hare is gone. Better: keep the house à la carte and add an A5 insert of four to six plates, same type, dated. The insert can die; the house card stays. If the whole room is going over to game, print a full A5 and put the house classics on the back so the guest who does not want venison still has a dinner.
Names should say the animal or the fungus in the first two words. "Venison, juniper, red cabbage" is a line a hunter and a tourist can both order. "Forest whisper" is a line that produces a conversation you do not have time for on a Saturday. Provenance, if you have it ("Lozère", "Alba", "Norcia"), sits after the name in 8.5 pt, not in a paragraph.
- Date the window on the card, in house type, no foil required
- Six to twelve dishes, or a four-line insert on the house menu
- Animal or fungus in the first words; origin in a smaller line
- Truffle supplements as a weight and a price, never as "market price" alone
The truffle line without the theatre
If you shave to order, print the supplement as a weight and a figure: "White truffle +12 € / 5 g". "Market price" on a Saturday night is how arguments start. If the price moves weekly, reprint the insert; at 99 € plus 10 € a copy, a stack of 20 is cheaper than a scene at table 12. Do not illustrate a tuber. A generated truffle will look like a potato and everyone will notice.
Black truffle in January and white in November are different products and should not share a heading. If you run both, two dated lines, two prices. Guests who know the difference will respect you; guests who do not will at least see that you do.
Game and the legal line
Origin and species matter more on game than on a chicken supreme. If national rules ask you to state origin of meat, put it on the card, 7 to 8 pt, not only on a chalkboard in the kitchen. Allergen keys still apply (juniper does not exempt the cream). Regulation 1169/2011 does not care that the bird was wild.
Reprint when Thursday fails
Plan two files: the card you hoped for, and a version with two dishes marked "when available" or swapped for a farm alternative in the same type. When the delivery fails, you strike a line or you print the fallback overnight. What you do not do is serve a printed venison that is pork, or a truffle tagliatelle with no truffle and a smile. The card is a contract.
350 g matte is right for a card that sits for six weeks. Soft-touch will take the autumn grease of a long service; wipe it or accept a shorter life. Do not laminate a truffle menu. It looks like a pub specials board and it fights the product.
A card that can die on Sunday
Date it, keep it short, price the luxury in grams, reprint when the woods say no. That is a limited-time card. When December comes, archive the file and let the house menu take the table back without a leftover boar in the header.
In Menu Atelier you duplicate the house design, drop in the six seasonal lines, add the date, switch to A5, and order a short run you can replace mid-month; the 3D preview is there to check that the insert still looks like the same restaurant when it sits next to the dinner card.