I rather enjoy eating at restuarants (proper restaurants with table service I mean).
I have some anxiety until I'm seated at the table - especially in an unfamiliar restaurant.
However, once seated I feel I have my own little space and can relax a little since from then on there is fairly standard & predictable interaction with the staff & other patrons. I typically order a beer as I sit down - liquid calming.
Lately though I've been to 2 restaurants where there are no menus, just a damned QR code stuck to the table with sticky-tape.
The first just took me to a picture of the menu - so instead of scanning the menu and salivating at the various options I'm pinch-zooming, scrolling & squinting. Even in "landscape" orientation, I couldn't read the whole description of each item. Then if you pause, the phone locks. Notifications are popping up over the menu. It's maddening for me. At least a real person took my order (on an iPad).
The next place though was much, much worse - the QR code took me to some online ordering website where I had to painstakingly scroll and click through 15 categories and nested sub-categories to see all the dishes - on a ~5" screen, in the glaring sunlight. All you could see was the name of the dish and a picture... you then have to click on the dish to see the description with more pinch-zooming, dragging and squinting.
A few times I clicked the "back" key too many times and I had to repeat the process. I just wanted to order drinks first, but had to accept cookies, terms & conditions, put in a credit card number. I had to wait for a waiter to ask if the cocktails were pre-mixed (my wife is diabetic and doesn't want sugar or syrup added). I then had to type in a tiny text box "Sugar syrup on the side for mojito please".
It's not even like it saved me social interaction - I'm fully masked up in a restaurant setting anyway and I still had to talk to staff AND deal with the rigidity of the ordering system (wrt to getting exactly what I want).
I don't mind Wagamama's take on it, where you order from a menu to a waiter, but you have a QR code to pay online at the end.
Going forward, I will not pay restaurant prices to order on my phone (← in case any restaurateurs are reading!).
/rant
