Most menu traffic is one-handed on a phone, often on weak mobile data inside a restaurant, and a menu page stacked with full-resolution dish photos is the slowest possible experience at exactly the moment a guest is deciding what to order. The photos were shot for print or social, not for a thumb-scroll menu grid, so they carry three to five times the pixels the layout ever renders. Compress them to the grid and hero sizes the menu actually uses and the page opens instantly without the food looking washed out.