Depends how complicated you want the menu to be.
There seems to be a general consensus that using multiple layouts and layers is the way to go, and it seems to work pretty seamlessly.
This in its simplest form is where you have a "main menu" layout with a button, when the button is clicked it goes to the layout "game" and starts from the beginning of your level.
Then you can have multiple buttons for different menus, either on other invisible layers or in different layouts. Keep in mind it's easier to fade in or move a layer than a layout however.
An example would be:
"Start" goes to a layout "level_00"
"Options" moves the screen / increases the opacity of the layer which has your options screen on it.
There's a tutorial for this as well: scirra.com/tutorials/594/building-a-global-user-interface-ui