Even if you love to cook, have a great kitchen, and a state-of-the-art dishwasher, there are times that you just don’t want to deal with it. In this city, those times call for take-out. You gotta figure even Mario Batali orders take-out once in a while.

One aspect of take-out that I don’t like is when the delivery person, after making a delivery, shoves menus under everyone’s door on their way out. I have a simple policy when it comes to the menus that are shoved under my door: I boycott the establishment. For life. Same thing for menus that have been folded and shoved in my mailbox. Conversely, those that are put in my mailbox by the Postal Service because the restaurant mailed them out are a-okay in my book.

In the Spring of 2006, my policy was put to the test.

I arrived home one day from work to find a menu under my door. This menu was from my favorite Japanese entrée place (sushi comes from a different place). I was stunned to find it under my door, and I immediately thought of ways that my policy could be “bent” to prevent them from landing on the blacklist. The best chance they had was that since I ordered from them prior to the menu-under-the-door incident, they could be “grandfathered” in, and given a second chance. I talked to friends and colleagues at length, and they all pointed out that the policy had no loopholes and that I must either abide by the policy or abandon it. They were right. All menus from the restaurant in question were thrown out, and I have not ordered from them since. The sad thing is that I still haven’t found a replacement that lives up to their quality.

I appreciate places that put their most up-to-date menu in the delivery bag because updated prices are nice. I feel bad stiffing the delivery guy a buck or two because I thought I had enough cash on hand, only to find out they raised their prices. Menus that are dated are even better. But there is a new fangled invention that may make menus a thing of the past. It’s called the Internet (they tell me it’s a bunch of tubes).

Menu Pages has an enormous amount of menus online that can be accessed by cuisine type or location (Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn only, at this time), and customers are encouraged to review their take-out experience. They’re my favorite because of their comprehensiveness and their speed at getting new establishment’s menus online. The typos are kinda funny too. I’ve been meaning to try the “low crab” bagels from my local bagel shop.

SeamlessWeb is excellent if they service your area (currently Manhattan, Brooklyn, Hoboken, and Jersey City). You browse a menu online, select the items you want, pay by credit card, and the order is transmitted to the restaurant, which delivers it, and you just sign a piece of paper when it gets delivered. I use it both at work and at home, and have not really had any problems with it. The beauty of SeamlessWeb is that since the order is written down through a computer, you bypass the place where most orders get screwed up. If you verbally tell someone you want a medium burger and well done fries, half the time you wind up with a well done burger and bow-tie pasta (I still shake my head in amazement when it happens), but by typing it out, it seems that the order gets messed up much less. It’s not a perfect system, but it comes in quite handy when you’re being lazy and don’t have a lot of cash on hand.

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