How would I find a list of great restaurants with mega menus?

December 15, 2014 3:55 PM

So what I'm looking for is great or famous NON-chain restaurants that are famed for having a lot of dishes. Doesn't necessarily have to be all different. Could be 100 kinds of sandwiches. Or 90 calzones. But it's gotta be a big list. I keep trying to search but I can't find what I'm looking for. Thoughts?
posted by rileyray3000 to Food & Drink (25 answers total)

Vietnamese restaurants have menus that mix and match various combinations of their core ingredients to come up with typically ~100 dishes.
posted by doctord at 4:00 PM on December 15, 2014

Shopsin's (pdf menu).
posted by saladin at 4:02 PM on December 15, 2014 [14 favorites]

Ike's Sandwiches
posted by rhizome at 4:08 PM on December 15, 2014

La Spaghetteria di Viterbo in Viterbo, Italy has over 100 kinds of spaghetti and a Guinness World Records title to prove it-- maybe they've certified other specialty places as well?
posted by jetlagaddict at 4:08 PM on December 15, 2014

I'm not aware of a list but we could probably get a good start on compiling one.

I submit Bern's dessert room.
posted by notquitemaryann at 4:24 PM on December 15, 2014

Anywhere you can choose your toppings—pizza and sandwiches come to mind—there's a combinatoric explosion of options. For instance, if you've got two crust styles, three crust sizes, and can opt for "no", "regular" or "double" for 8 different toppings, that's already just shy of 40,000 combinations.

But perhaps this is missing the point of your question. Does it specifically have to be a list of items rather than different combinations of items? If not, anywhere with 10 items on its menu would fall into this category since you could either order or not order each item, giving over 1000 combinations...
posted by jepler at 4:27 PM on December 15, 2014

A local-to-me contribution: Rainbow Pizza, which serves much more than pizza. It's physically large as well, as their full color table-side menu is printed on laminated 11" X 17" paper.

Their food is delicious, too.
posted by mosk at 4:41 PM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ida Davidsen in Copenhagen. 177 smørrebrød!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 4:54 PM on December 15, 2014

Correction, 250 of 'em!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 4:55 PM on December 15, 2014

Response by poster: Well ideally it'd just be US ones but I love some of the selections.

That said can you think of any search terms that would make sense for searching for this sort of thing?
posted by rileyray3000 at 5:02 PM on December 15, 2014

Lost Dog Cafe (.pdf file)
posted by invisible ink at 5:06 PM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: And yes it would be a LIST Of items not a "series of combinations"
posted by rileyray3000 at 5:17 PM on December 15, 2014

OMG the Metro 29 Diner on Lee Highway in Arlington, VA has a ridiculously huge menu.
posted by mon-ma-tron at 5:32 PM on December 15, 2014

The Deli-icious menu (in Somerville, MA) is enormous.
posted by cider at 5:38 PM on December 15, 2014

Hong Kong cafés with 400 menu items are a genre of their own in the Bay Area. Here's a typical menu.
posted by aws17576 at 6:54 PM on December 15, 2014

Greek diners on the East Coast are known for their enormous menus (literally--printed on ledger-sized sheets and extending to 16 pages or so).
posted by Leatherstocking at 7:25 PM on December 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Jerry's (menu PDF) in Chicago has an impressive sandwich selection.
posted by Fig at 7:37 PM on December 15, 2014

Baltimore's Broadway Diner is just such an East Coast Greek diner. They have easily over 100 items across an impressive number of categories. The food is pretty much diner food, with a few dishes blessed by that mischievous imp, Guy Fierri.
posted by codacorolla at 7:43 PM on December 15, 2014

I came in to talk about diners -- and it's not even the apparently Greek ones. Anything in slightly-upstate New York (i.e., between the City and Albany) will have dozens of huge pages crammed full of every combination of meats and vegetables and starches and oh god now I want a Denver omelet at eleven at night.
posted by Etrigan at 7:59 PM on December 15, 2014

Everyone's right about diners in general, but Mastori's in Bordentown NJ has the single longest diner menu I've ever seen.
posted by ActionPopulated at 9:00 PM on December 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

The delicious and affordable Marietta Fish Market in the northwestern Atlanta suburbs takes first-timers forever to read through all the options. I'm not even sure the website listings, which are impressively expansive, take it all into account, because the specials and desserts are on daily printouts. I've only ever looked at the dinner menu (see link) but the drinks menu, I'm informed, is equally long.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 10:41 PM on December 15, 2014

Most NJ diners (and others in the northeast/mid-Atlantic) have long menus, but ActionPopulated is right about Mastori's. Not only that, but they give you free cheese and cinnamon bread that they'll happily let you take home, so you get breakfast the next day.
posted by mollweide at 4:23 AM on December 16, 2014

There are also many bars famous for having hundreds of beers available, eg Monk's Cafe in Philly or Sunset tap room near Boston. That might be pretty easy to find lists of since there are forums devoted to beer drinking (but since you're probably looking for food not beverages, I'm not going to go looking)
posted by aimedwander at 6:00 AM on December 16, 2014

Amy's Omlette House in Long Branch, NJ. I had the Jalapeno Hell-hole on Saturday, it was one of the best things I have ever eaten.
posted by capnsue at 7:40 AM on December 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Macado's, which has a handful of locations in Virginia and thereabouts. I'm not sure if you'd consider it a chain. The number of sandwiches on their menu is staggering!
posted by srrh at 12:07 PM on December 16, 2014