> It would be for the same reason that some restaurants don't put $ or numbers with two decimal places anywhere on the menu.
I had thought it was a signifier that the place is supposed to be high-class; the implication to me is that open discussion of money is slightly distasteful and should be done as briefly as possible. (And leaving off decimal places in particular says "no one here is so regretfully poor as to consider quibbling over mere fractions of a dollar.")
The dollar sign is redundant and a constant reminder that the customer is giving up dollars they already have for food of unknown value. Humans are also hardwired to value a thing they already have more than something of equal nominal value that they could easily acquire.
In the same way that freemium games elide your spends of real money behind a layer of invented virtual currency, the goal is to make the customer forget that they are spending actual money.
I had thought it was a signifier that the place is supposed to be high-class; the implication to me is that open discussion of money is slightly distasteful and should be done as briefly as possible. (And leaving off decimal places in particular says "no one here is so regretfully poor as to consider quibbling over mere fractions of a dollar.")