When it comes to choosing from the menu, I know people who always order the thing they’d never make for themselves.

I know people who always get the special.

I know people who refuse to eat anything off a menu unless it’s line-caught salmon.

Me? I look for trigger and block words.

Trigger words are things I love like ‘lime’, ‘coconut’, or ‘truffles’.

Block words are things like ‘dill’, ‘jus’, or ‘squid ink’.

My brain scans a menu twice.

The first scan is to pick out all the block words and eliminate those menu items as possibilities.

The second scan is to count up the trigger words, with the goal being to find a meal with no block words and, ideally, three triggers.

Again, I’ve only just noticed I do this, it’s not a conscious thing. And it happens fast.

Where there’s a tie-breaker, say, two dishes with two trigger words each, I’ll ask the waiter for advice.

That’s not to say I’ll always take the advice. I’m like Kanye in the studio.

Kanye’s process is communal … but his output is most definitely entirely his own.

Rappers, producers, and entourage are all welcome to offer ideas or phrases, but ... nearly every suggestion is met with, “That’s really not at all a word I would ever say, but don’t stop offering ideas, thanks!”

[When] a rah-rah couplet is offered by a rapper in the room … Kanye jokingly says it would be “great — if my name was LL and I was making ‘Mama Said Knock You Out Pt. II.’”

You get the feeling it’s addition by subtraction with him — the demonstration of what he doesn’t like illuminates what he does like.

That’s what I’m looking for in that waiter’s response. It will illuminate what I like, even if “that’s not really a dish I would ever choose, but don’t stop offering ideas, thanks!”

To confirm my thesis, I went back to the last three menus I made decisions on to see if the dish I chose lined up with my my trigger and block word scanning process.

Menu One

Scan Results:

Menu Two

Scan Results:

Menu Three

Scan Results:

Some takeaways:

• My tastes are set. This is both comforting and concerning. It’s nice to know yourself. But your chances of radically new discoveries are low.
• The Kanye approach — the demonstration of what you don’t like illuminating what you do like — can provide value beyond just the studio setting.
• Why would you EVER get the chicken?