A restaurant meal is where food diaries die. The dish is not in your kitchen. The serving is not a gram amount you chose. The name on the menu is not the name in a database. FORM treats the menu as data. Photograph it, pick what you ordered, and get a card.
Scan the menu before the food arrives
Open scan and photograph the menu, or a page of it. FORM reads the items it can see. Pick the dish you are ordering, or the one that already arrived. Add sides you know about. Edit if the kitchen poured extra sauce. Save the card while you still remember the order. Waiting until you get home turns a menu into a guess.
What menu data is good for
- Restaurants, cafes, and hotel breakfast lists.
- Dishes you can point at on paper or a screen, including a photo of a board.
- Takeaway menus when the bag is a mystery and the PDF is not.
Menu nutrition is still an estimate. Kitchens vary. Portions drift. A menu scan is better than a blank log, and worse than a lab. FORM does not claim restaurant accuracy. It claims a log you can finish at the table.
Menu vs plate vs text
Use the menu when you are ordering or the list is clearer than the plate. Use a plate scan when the food is in front of you and the menu is gone. Use text when neither photo helps: a tasting menu with no names, a shared table, a dish you cannot photograph. The job is the same: get a card for the meal you ate.
Eating out without a second app
The menu card is fuel on the same day as the session you logged, and the sleep and recovery FORM tracks. That is the point of FORM at a restaurant: the meal joins the day, instead of living in a note you never file.