Now I'm imagining a restaurant handing out iPads instead of menus to keep you "safe".

If I recall correctly before Covid Applebees had some weird off-brand tablet thing on the table that looked like you could badly order via it, but mainly what it did was not work for playing some horrible Android game.

I suppose it could be used as a projectile.

I've been in several restaurants which use tablets. Nothing wrong with it. They're not handing them out, each table has them. E.g. Yard House does it.

Happened to me pretty recently in Bogotá, Colombia. At the table waiter handed us two very old iPads with broken screens to read a PDF of the menu.

In Santiago, Chile I was handed waiter’s phone with a menu from some local takeout when I informed them that I can’t read their menu hosted via QR since i don’t have data.

In South America it’s unfortunately popular to just have QR leading you to a huge PDF hosted somewhere in US to read a menu. Even in places that barely have internet like in the mountains… And more often than not they don’t have paper backups.

I was at a restaurant in LA that had a tablet-like gizmo on the tables. You could order through it, call the waiter, and pay at the end. It wasn't presented as for keeping us safe, though.

The fun fact was that the waiter actually gave us paper menus when sitting us, without even asking, though they also introduced the gizmo.

I actually found that quite nice, since they had a wide selection of beers and there was a beer-selection app that would go in the details of each beer and allowed us to easily choose the kind we wanted.

Tablet ordering has been common in Japan for years. Usually they're bolted to the table with a locked charging cable.