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Sometimes it’s nice to turn the brain off and not have to decide what to eat. Just sit down at a restaurant, look at the menu board and choose between three or five things rather than having to flip through a novella. I love choice, but sometimes I like when a restaurant narrows it down for me to a handful of essential dishes that get diners coming back, like the old saying of doing one thing and one thing well.

There are a few reasons a restaurant may have a small menu of, say, eight items or less, such as access to a small kitchen or a shortage of cooks. But a place with a just a few offerings also lets me know the chef is putting all their efforts into these few dishes and is confident enough that their business can survive on it.

When Sang-Ji Fried Bao first opened in 2018 near Yonge and Finch, owner John Xue and his cooks worked in a kitchen about the size of two office cubicles, and fewer than 10 customers could fit inside the dining space.

They served just three things: the namesake Shanghainese-style pan-fried baos, wonton soup, and dry noodles with peanuts and scallion oil. The dishes were consistent, affordable and the kind of food Xue would eat at the street food stalls back in China.

The baos are filled with ground pork and gelatinized pork broth, enveloped in a yeast dough that’s first pan-fried to give it a crispy, golden-brown bottom before being steamed to get that pillowy dome on top. Instructions are given at the tables on how to eat them (take a small bite to let the steam escape first, drink the hot broth inside, and then eat). Xue says they make about 500 during the week and 700 on weekends.

“It was a tiny little store so we could only produce so many dishes. (The baos) may look simple, but they take a lot of time to execute,” says Xue. “We chose these three items because they focus on different textures and flavours. The baos are the signature item. The noodles are the carbs and the wontons are like a soup so they go with each other.”

The restaurant moved to a larger location last year just a few doors south on Yonge Street. The dining space is twice the size, and the kitchen has a few more helpers, including Xue’s wife and father.

The menu grew, too, but there’s still fewer than 10 items. New additions include the duck vermicelli, a big bowl of light-tasting duck and chicken broth with glass noodles, jiggly squares of duck blood, shredded duck meat and fried tofu puffs. There are two snacks: fried dough fritter with hoisin and sambal oelek wrapped in rice paper and egg and finished with pork floss and crispy fried boneless pork ribs. There’s also a curry variation of the baos now.

“Just keeping the menu simple helps us with better service,” says Xue. “To be honest, it’s all very labour intensive. Every Monday we close the restaurant to spend eight hours to make the soup gelatin for the bao. The ladies that make the dough come in at eight, nine in the morning to make it before the restaurant opens at 11.”

But just because a menu is small, it doesn’t mean it’s a one-and-done visit.

Since opening in November 2019 in the Junction, Thai Nyyom has three mains on the menu (technically six, as each dish has a vegan counterpart): chicken (or tofu) khao soi; khao man kai, a Thai variation of Hainanese poached chicken rice; and a daily special.

On my visit, I had a big bowl of tender stewed pork in a big bowl of noodles swimming in a clear, mahogany-coloured broth with a healthy sprinkling of cilantro and green onions on top. It’s warming, earthy but bright with a mix of tart, herbaceous and savoury notes. It was something I don’t remember seeing at other Thai restaurants.

Every day the restaurant’s Instagram account, @ThaiNyyom, updates followers on the daily special. There was fried pork belly with sticky rice and noodle soup with bone-in chicken and bitter melon. On Mondays, they make pad Thai to placate diners who must have it.

“When we started the restaurant, in our minds we wanted only two people (in the kitchen) so that’s why we have a limited menu because that’s what we can handle,” says Charles Chanta-Urai who owns Thai Nyyom with wife and chef Oat Thongtong. “But we picked the dishes we think people will love. It depends on the ingredients we can get, but it’s dishes that are authentic to us.”

Chanta-Urai says a smaller menu allows Thongtong to focus on more complex dishes she’d make on occasion, such as the steamed curry fish where the fish and red curry is cooked in banana leaves.

“It’s a delicate, handcrafted dish that a lot of restaurants don’t do because it takes a lot of time,” he says. To him, going to a restaurant that serves two or three dishes isn’t unusual. “This is really common in Thailand. If you’re good at khao soi, you only make that. If you make chicken rice, you only make that. We want to make dishes that Thai people miss and Canadians would want to try.”

An even smaller menu is West Queen West’s four-month old J’s Steak Frites, opened by husband and wife team Jad Sfeir and Tara Tang. There’s just one thing on offer: a $49 set menu of bread, salad, a 10-ounce striploin steak and unlimited fries. (There’s also a separate a la carte dessert menu.) Sfier says while the concept of a restaurant serving just steak frites isn’t new, guests have enjoyed the streamlined dining experience.

“Usually it takes forever for a group to order, so people are happy they don’t have to look at the menu or have the waiter come back multiple times,” says Sfeir. “The reception has been great so far. Even at home sometimes you don’t know what to cook for dinner. This is relieving guests from making another decision. All they need to do is relax.”

Upon sitting down at J’s on a recent Sunday afternoon, all I had to decide on was what to drink (too early for wine, so I had a Shirley Temple) and how I wanted my steak cooked (medium-rare, which the server writes down on the paper tablecloth).

The steak was cooked as asked and simply seasoned with salt. The server comes with a little tray of fries and tells me they’ll fry up more if I want. On Sundays, the meal comes with a dessert (a log-shaped brownie, in my case). On regular nights, there’s a separate a la carte dessert menu that can include cakes, flans or pastries.

While having a more limited menu streamlines the cooking process, Sfeir says there’s a different kind of pressure that comes with it. When a place is known for just one or two things on the menu, that dish can make or break the business.

“It’s a lot easier to execute but also more difficult,” he says. “Because if you’re only offering one thing, you want it to be perfect.”

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