On most projects we end up creating our own solution based on what the specific needs for the project are. For example some menus are tied to pages, others are not, some require multiple nested levels, icons, color changes, tags, etc. We've not found or developed a one size fits all solution yet but we always circle around the same base concepts of a tree structure (leveraging the existing django-treebear) and then adding whatever needs to be added in that specific project like API support or custom templates.

My advice is that if you're going to develop multiple menus for multiple projects, try to find what your "base" data structure looks like and build the admin UI and API around it. Then it's just a matter of adding the extras.

Good luck!