The Guardian view on limited choice: à la carte should be off the menu | Editorial

Expensive restaurants are dropping à la carte in favour of a much more limited range of choices. It is an echo of the new enthusiasm for pop-up restaurants and supper clubs where amateur cooks host dinner parties for strangers. A hundred years after Escoffier brought the multi-page menu to London, chefs are cutting right back on the number of dishes they offer. One explanation is that à la carte is so wasteful. The word is less gastronomique, more bistronomique, and it’s great news for everyone who cares more about quality (the chef only stocks the very best, knowing it will be used) than quantity; it’s even better news for those who worry about food waste. But the association between choice and wasteful spending, so vividly illustrated in the rival costs of the British and US health systems, is only the start of it. Too much choice, as Tesco acknowledged in a recent decision to hack away at its product range, can actually stop customers making a choice at all. The insight that an excess of options leads to a kind of paralysis by analysis is not a new one. Back in the 1950s, the psychologist Herbert Simon coined the word “satisficer” to describe people content with the idea that good is good enough. Ten years ago, Barry Schwartz, an academic interested in the psychology of economics, wrote The Paradox of Choice, as he tried to explain to himself why having dozens of different styles of jeans to choose from left him more dissatisfied than having to buy the only style in the store. No choice is bad. But too much choice is not just wasteful, and – where state provision is concerned – unaffordable: it makes us miserable too.