Interesting discussion of menu language

[Jinmyo]

ostentatious thesaurus-mongering

So that's bad, then?

[Fat Guy]

Let's give Mark a quick eGullet reading list tailored for the lover of language. Maybe we can grow this into a mini-index of our favorite eGullet language discussions. My top pick: Overused Restaurant Reviewer Words & Metaphors

[balmagowry]

ostentatious thesaurus-mongering

So that's bad, then?

Probably the "ostentatious" more than the "thesaurus-mongering," I'd venture to suggest - it's all in how you use it. I remember working on an article about the bizarre parallel evolution of horchata/orgeat, and trying to come up with an elegant way of expressing that though Spanish-English dictionaries translate "horchata" as "orgeat" and vice versa, the two liquids - identical at birth - are no longer the same thing, not at all at all. Can't remember why it was so important to find a new way to say it; maybe we had already used up our quota of "sames" and "identicals" for the graf. Anyway, we set off on a thesaurus-ride and ended up at "equiponderant," triumphantly typed it in and flattered ourselves we'd done something rather clever. Seemed like a good note on which to end a fine day's work. Next day we looked at the draft and cringed: hoo boy, we must have been tired and punchy by the time we did that. To say that our brilliant thesaurus-trophy stuck out like a sore thumb would be to praise it with faint damn: it seemed to lend a lurid glow to the entire page.

EDIT: Hey Mark, welcome aboard!

Edited May 18, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[Bux]

Welcome Mark. I suspect you will find other threads up your alley. If not, please start one.

I can't really take sides between the "hamburgers" and the "Buck Run Farm’s Grass Fed Beef burger" when the seemingly superfluous words add meaning, whether or not I care about the meaning they add. Redundancy is another matter. The classics are "creamery butter" and "farm raised just about any cultivated vegetable." "Wild tuna" may be in the same category, although I think there is some farmed tuna. "Wild Caught Tuna" however, is in a class by itself as a phrase. Is there a restaurant seving tuna that's not yet been caught, or does the phrase mean to distinguish tuna caught in the wild as opposed to some wild and crazy tuna that's been trapped at a tame cocktail party on Manhattan's upper east side?

"Organic Wild Mushroom" is another phrase that seems too long. Is there some less than organic corner of nature I should worry about when eating wild mushrooms elsewhere?

[Pan]

Mushrooms break down organic material. I don't think they can digest inorganic matter.

[bleudauvergne]

Welcome, Mark! At the same time we have been talking about translations of menus from the French over in the France Forum (click), headed up by Bux.

A couple of years ago in a discussion group for anglophones in France, people were bringing up ideas of kinds of work we could do in France, and I was talking about how being a menu translator would be a great job when I posted:

I have thought about the way that most if not all French dishes have their name and that describes the dish fully, for the French. But if you go into a restaurant in L.A. for instance, instead of "Blanquette de Veau", they will have : top quality young tender veal cutlets slow braised in their own sauce to perfection, graced with a generous sampling of forest mushrooms and braised spring onions, and finished with a slightly tangy gravy enriched with cream and egg.

I once met a Canadian woman in a restaurant (I was waiting for my husband, and offered her an aperetif when I noticed she was speaking English) who had the same idea. I She also observed that many of the things translated by the local tourist bureau needed polishing up. I think she was writing a book, too. But everyone says that.

I guess if I was doing it I would insist that I try each dish in order to best describe the items on the menu and bring out their strongest points on it. You could save quite a bit on food expenses by lining up your clients and organizing daily menu tastings.

This was way before I found eGullet, and unfortunately there were not enough like minded people to continue the discussion to any great length. I am going to take the side of Lisa's "As a substitute for a standardized cultural vocabulary of recognized dishes?" and say I think the recipe on the menu phenomenon was born stateside, where multi-ethnicity requires an explanation of a dish. The embelllishments and plays on this (like the "Buck Run Farm’s Grass Fed Beef burger") come from that tradition.

I have noticed too that this is not just a French phenomenon. In countries other than France, names for dishes are simply stated and the discussion at the table is not what is in them, but how well the dish is done, based on the diners' criteria for the dish. In China, you will never find descriptive menus like the ones in the States, because there is no learning process involved when ordering dishes that are served in all restaurants. All dishes contain 3 or 4 syllables and no more. In fact many restaurants in China did not even have menus, you'd just go in and order, and they'd bring you the dishes you ordered.

Specifically, on the Lyon Fine Dining (click) thread, we have been musing on a freakish translation of one of Lyon's finest dining establishments.

Happy you've come to join us.

-Lucy

edited to remove some spaces

Edited May 18, 2004 by bleudauvergne (log)

[Fat Guy]

if you go into a restaurant in L.A. for instance, instead of "Blanquette de Veau", they will have : top quality young tender veal cutlets slow braised in their own sauce to perfection, graced with a generous sampling of forest mushrooms and braised spring onions, and finished with a slightly tangy gravy enriched with cream and egg.

Two minor observations about that comment: 1) the L.A. menu example is either an exaggerrated hypothetical one or an atypically ridiculous specimen; and 2) it's not as though you can go into many top French restaurants these days and order blanquette de veau.

[bleudauvergne]

Yes, Steve, most definitely exaggerated, an example of what at the time I thought a restaurant back home (in the U.S.) serving a blanquette de veau would describe it as. Atypically ridiculous? Not sure what you mean by that. I was attempting to illustrate that very simple home style dishes are often over-explained in menus back home.

Who said top French restaurant? Sorry if I gave that impression by posting the Lyon fine dining thread!

[balmagowry]

Two minor observations about that comment: 1) the L.A. menu example is either an exaggerrated hypothetical one or an atypically ridiculous specimen; and 2) it's not as though you can go into many top French restaurants these days and order blanquette de veau.

No, but Lucy has a point (though she mis-attributes some of its origin to me - I don't remember who said that bit about the standardized vocabulary): in France/Germany/Italy/Austria there are traditional dishes which need no explanation, unless, of course, the person reading the menu is an Ignorant American Tourist who has never heard of Jaeger Schnitzel or Rehschlegel or Blanquette de Veau. America has relatively few such classic native dishes, in part because it's a younger country, and I think the kind of menu Lucy is talking about assumes an audience of nothing but Ignorant American Tourists. This is of course an exaggeration for effect, but outside of things like Clam Chowder (and even that is open to interpretation! as discussed ad nauseam on several threads) and Club Sandwiches, many of our traditional dishes are in fact adapted or adopted from the traditions of other countries. From a practical standpoint, I can imagine the recipe-on-the-menu phenomenon ( good one, Lucy) evolving as a result of time lost while waiters explain each item in detail to one clueless customer after another; better perhaps to save some of that time and effort by providing the answers ahead of time.

From that it's but a short step, or maybe two, to the kind of high-asted language used by menus giving themselves airs. America has many different kinds of pride, ranging from the blunt down-home plain-speaking variety to the "Just Because I'm a Colonial Don't Assume I Ain't Sophisticated" kind; it's the latter, I imagine, that inspires the use of language like "Tender Baby Frogs Lightly Killed." Oh lord, and I'm generalizing again - I realize Americans don't have a monopoly on this form of affectation, but it doesn't seem improbable that we gave birth to it courtesy of one of our special brands of snobbery. Then again, as culinary fashions change and restaurant fare veers from the traditional to the freshly invented (nouvelle cuisine anyone?), the explanations actually become necessary - or useful, at any rate - on a more global scale. As long as they are explanations and not highfalutin fancy talk intended to intimidate rather than elucidate!

The menu Lucy mentions in Lyon is a slightly different case; there the original French is a bit high-flown, in keeping with the flamboyance of the presentation (I'm talking through half a hat here, as I have not been to the establishment in question; I'm judging based only on the... ahem... pretentious design and attitude of the web site); but the translations, over and above that, are marvels of fractured English. Hard to say whether achieved by man or machine, but they remind me of nothing so much as the "idiotisms" in English As She Is Spoke. I have to keep reminding myself that it could be a serious problem for the restaurant - and even then I can't help giggling at the sheer silliness of the results. "Madnesses of Injuries" has become my mantra when I go to the gym or to ballet class. And you can bet I'll be watching out for "Marine of the Wolf" when next I put out to sea!

EDIT to insert quote for continuity

Edited May 18, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[Fat Guy]

A few points:

- France is not some culinary backwater where everybody is eating dishes from a 1960s-era American high-school French-language textbook. Try going to France and dining out with that glossary as your guide and see how far you get on most menus. The dishes just aren't there at the high end, and they're increasingly disappearing everywhere.

- French restaurants used to be judged on how well they executed certain classic dishes. That is no longer the case.

- When in the US, Europeans ask plenty of questions about American menus that Americans wouldn't ask.

- French restaurants in the US that serve traditional French cuisine typically use traditional French menu langauge or efficient translations thereof: canard a l'orange = orange duck. In both countries, such restaurants have radically declined in number over the past couple of decades.

- French restaurants in the US and France that serve modern cuisine don't have a code vocabulary available, except to the extent that if they say "canard a l'orange" on their menus you can be sure only that you won't be getting canard a l'orange.

- The US has far more diversity of restaurant types than France, where most restaurants are French.

- A non-French restaurant in France needs to do plenty of explaining.

[balmagowry]

All very true. I'm sorry if I was unclear: I was looking at the issue from a speculative historical perspective, trying to imagine how it might originally have evolved. I tried to allow for changes in cuisine requiring menu descriptions all over the world with the bit about freshly invented fare and nouvelle cuisine, but this kind of analysis does lend itself to extremely broad sweeping statements, and maybe that part got swept under the rug in the process.

I do think that you have to look for a moment when culinary traditions changed markedly in order to find a parallel moment when menu descriptions began to be necessary. In real life nothing is that cut and dried, but I suspect there is a correlation between the advent of cheap air travel (and therefore the ability of the less-educated to travel widely) and the need for more explanation of local culture to tourists. Then there is probably another such hypothetical pivotal moment in which the local culture itself changes just as dramatically, and menu explanations therefore become necessary for the locals as well as the tourists.

'Scuse me while I get off my broomstick and sweep some more. Broad strokes, broad strokes!

[Mark Liberman]

I can't really take sides between the "hamburgers" and the "Buck Run Farm’s Grass Fed Beef burger" when the seemingly superfluous words add meaning, whether or not I care about the meaning they add. Redundancy is another matter. The classics are "creamery butter" and "farm raised just about any cultivated vegetable."

Redundancy is a real and relevant issue, though I guess you can also think of it as a form of repetition, which can be effective both locally ("really, really big") and globally (as with repeated slogans or images). Pile-driver repetition of modifiers, redundant or not, supports an alternative interpretation of the White Dog's menu style, suggested to me by Cindie McLemore: the customers are mostly academics, who spend their time obsessed with complex verbal abstractions, and need to be lured back into contact with the world of the senses. If you can do that with a 15-word name for "grilled cheese sandwich" rather than a baseball bat, so much the better.

But I also want to repeat that I'm not really in the business of "taking sides" here. I didn't mean to say "isn't it silly how these people write their menu items?", but rather "isn't it interesting how these people write their menu items?" Monty Python skits are often funny because they connect a ritualized form with content from a completely different context, or juxtapose ritual forms from incompatible contexts; and this can also be a good way to point out what the forms and their contexts are like. It's funny, too, but I meant the undercurrent of humor as a means rather than an end.

[Fat Guy]

To expand the discussion outwards from the axis of French and American classic and modern cuisines, we can also look at some of the other cuisines that are popular in the US. For example, if you walk into most Italian-American "red sauce" restaurants, Chinese-American take-out joints, Japanese sushi-bars, or Tex-Mex-style taquerias, you'll find -- at least per region -- a high level of menu conformity and shorthand code. Today most any idiot in the US knows exactly what moo shu pork and miso soup are when not too long ago such food would have been considered the most exotic thing in the world -- not only would it have needed to be explained at length, but even then nobody would have eaten it. Do European tourists know what any of this stuff is when they see it on US menus? In my experience, they need a ton of hand-holding when dining off their beaten track.

[balmagowry]

Don't we all!

Well, no, present company and self excepted, I guess. Or maybe it's just that we've beaten more track than most people.

[Fat Guy]

Also a note about Le Bec Fin, from the original example: Le Bec Fin would have been typical in many ways 20 years ago, but today it is one of only a handful of restaurants in the US that operate in that style. And that's not to say such restaurants are plentiful in France. Today, in any given large US city other than New York, there might be one surviving restaurant in the style of Le Bec Fin. In New York, where there are a few more than that, we're right now seeing a rash of closings: La Cote Basque, Lutece, and La Caravelle, all in the space of a few months. Theses highly publicized closings, however, divert attention from a more fundamental lack of openings: nobody has launched a restaurant like Le Bec Fin or La Cote Basque in ages, in the US or in France. And check out the average age of the customers.

[Bux]

French food has changed, and it's still changing. The major apparent change in French food is not a change in what's seen in restaurants, but the fact that what's seen is no longer a constant. Even the early successes of nouvelle cuisine were quickly codified, classicized and served at many restaurants. There's far more creativity and focus on individuality in French cooking today. Not all this is for the good, but it is what's happening at the top and trickling down.

Early on after my introduction to French food and especially that of haute cuisine, I started to make a determined effort to become a sophisticated diner, at least in the sorts of places that mattered to me at the time, and I tried to make notes filed away in that organic hard drive we refer to as grey matter. Forestière meant with mushrooms. That was easy and made sense, but many of the others just had to be learned by tasting or reading and there was nothing to do but memorize that sauce nantua meant a white sauce deeply flavored with crayfish. The commonly found sauces and garnishes came easily, but there was a repertoire of what seemed like thousands of names if you read the Larousse Gastronomic and Escoffier's works and even the dedicated haute cuisinista was unlikely to consume them all in a lifetime, let alone run into them on a menu. But they were all valid in terms of use to the chef in composing his menu. You'd be hard pressed to find many of the terms on a two or three star menu these days. In the sixties, a top restaurant would pride itself on its coq au vin. Today, Michelin might find that dish on a menu as reason to withhold a star.

Forty years ago, those were international terms as much as they were French in that they were used in the best restaurants in Paris, London or New York and perhaps many other places in the western world. The "best" restaurants were French. Today, they're not French, or at least not as recognizably French as they used to be and that goes for the top restaurnants in France. Nevertheless, a translation of à la forestière would come out as "in the style of the forest," or if done by machine as "to the forest." A simple "beef stew in the style of the forest", is quite different than "beef stew to the forest," but the latter is still intelligible. The problem grew with the nouvelle cuisine custom of adapting terms to clever new uses. One of the worst translations to miss the concept was when "civet de homard" came across as "stew of furred game of lobster." Of course that's nothing compared to "Madnesses of Injury Slice of bread and Delicacies Exquisite" to convey "Folies de Dame Tartine et Friandes Exquises." The discussion on the France forum, to a certain extent revolves around the question of whether the poetry of the original is lost in translation or whether it is raised to a new and appreciably higher level of abstraction.

[balmagowry]

It's funny, too, but I meant the undercurrent of humor as a means rather than an end.

You've made me realize that I'm happiest when humor is both means and end.

Seriously, though, it's generally pretty easy to tell which instances of highfalutin menu language are which. Let's see: there's

• the incompetent translation
  
• the sincere effort at explanation
  
• the affectation, well done
  
• the affectation, badly done
  

Have I left any out? All of these, with the possible exception of the second, can supply fodder for the irreverent and easily-amused.

An all-time favorite in my family, from a Chinese menu many years ago: "Fried Frag." Never did find out what it was....

And BTW Steve supplies an important transitional point in my overbroad historical sweeps: the moment when the exotic (like mu shu pork) becomes the familiar in any culture, as that culture becomes accustomed to it. This must recur at some sort of cyclical interval.

[Bux]

But I also want to repeat that I'm not really in the business of "taking sides" here. I didn't mean to say "isn't it silly how these people write their menu items?", but rather "isn't it interesting how these people write their menu items?"

Nor am I usually in the business of meaning to take sides. If I seem to in the cause of moving an interesting dialog, it should be noted that might have taken the other side if it presented a better opportunity to draw out the discussion. As full of myself as I may sound at times, I'm really here to be enlightened. Thus, I'd really appreciate your sticking around and pointing out interesting things, especially those where there's nothing to be gained by taking sides, but everything to be gained by an examination from all sides.

[Fat Guy]

As full of myself as I may sound at times, I'm really here to be enlightened.

I think you just found your signature line, Bux!

Edited to add for Sam Kinsey: "As full of myself as I always sound, I'm really here to be enlightened."

Edited to add for Steve Klc: "As full of myself as I may sound at times, I'm really here to enlighten you."

[balmagowry]

...I tried to make notes filed away in that organic hard drive we refer to as grey matter. Forestière meant with mushrooms. That was easy and made sense, but many of the others just had to be learned by tasting or reading and there was nothing to do but memorize that sauce nantua meant a white sauce deeply flavored with crayfish.

I'm sorry, but that was just too good a straight line to resist. I'm going to commit the great gaffe of quoting myself. (Well... hell, it's only one snooty step beyond linking to one's own posts - which I'm also about to do.)

This is the lead from our Tin House article "Chicken Marengo Revealed":

In the art and science of culinary nomenclature, certain terms are unequivocal - for reasons ranging from the obscure to the transparent, they denote highly specific preparations or ingredients. Florentine always means spinach. Véronique always means grapes.

Crécy: carrots.

Du Barry: cauliflower.

Marengo: crawfish and fried eggs.

Or... not.

Marengo: braised with or without tomatoes and garlic, with or without truffles, with or without mushrooms or onions, with or without brandy and/or wine and/or lemon juice, garnished with fried eggs and/or croutons and/or fried and/or steamed crawfish.

Or... not.

Oh, did we have us some fun with that one, debunking all the popular the legends. The article itself is not available on-line, alas, but its gist (which ranges far afield from the subject of the present discussion, but is still IMO pretty fascinating) is thoroughly covered in this thread.

I'm sorry. I just couldn't resist. I will now return to my customary modesty. Carry on.

[balmagowry]

As full of myself as I may sound at times, I'm really here to be enlightened.

I think you just found your signature line, Bux!

Edited to add for Sam Kinsey: "As full of myself as I always sound, I'm really here to be enlightened."

Edited to add for Steve Klc: "As full of myself as I may sound at times, I'm really here to enlighten you."

Waah! based on the post I just this moment put up, I claim the right to share all three versions!

[Bux]

the moment when the exotic (like mu shu pork) becomes the familiar in any culture, as that culture becomes accustomed to it. This must recur at some sort of cyclical interval.

One always has to be careful about burying one's head in the Guide Culinaire protecting one's self from the mystery of Chaud-Froid de Cailles en Belle Vue appearing on the menu, while the hip guys are all talking about lemon grass.

P.S. I'm happy to feed straight lines if it helps.

[balmagowry]

Ahhhhh... that's what I love to hear. You and me, kiddo, we could make some beyoodaful music togedda.

[helenjp]

Just applying the can-opener to this well-preserved topic!

What do you want to see on the menu for a "foreign" cuisine?

In countries like Japan, where a non-roman writing system is used, of course there's another level of incomprehensibility - if the menu is not romanized, you not only don't understand the words, you can't even read them or make a stab at pronouncing them.

So if you walked into a restaurant, where do you want your menu to be, on a continuum from "authentic" experience/ understand nothing to full explanation/more info than the locals get?

For example (content, not finished copy) - if you order this popular drink snack without knowing more than the name of the main ingredient, you will not get the expensive slices of monkfish popular for winter hotpots, but a "cheap treat": the grilled jaw of a deepsea fish, bristling with teeth, and with some flavorful but slightly stringy cheek meat:

1) あんこうのやなぎ焼き

2） ANKOU: Yanagi-yaki

3) Grilled Monkfish

4) Ankou no Yanagi-yaki, grilled jaw and cheeks of monkfish.

5) Deep-sea monkfish (ankou) is a winter treat highly prized in the Kanto region of eastern Japan. "Yanagi-yaki" is the grilled jaw of the monkfish, enjoyed for the flavorful cheek meat. Recommended orders: Order a hot flask of sake with the yanagi-yaki along with one of the monkfish liver dishes on our menu as snacks, and follow it with a main dish of tender, mild sliced flesh in a hotpot. Follow the hotpot with a bowl of hot rice, or onigiri (riceballs).

And how different are your expectations, depending on whether you are 1) at an "ethnic" restaurant in your own country, 2) on a foreign country, eating "local" cuisine in a major city or resort area, or 3) in a foreign country doing business in a minor local town, eating at a local restaurant?

It's possible for Hicksville Diner to provide menus in seven languages if they so choose, but is that something you even want, either as a "native local" or as a "foreign visitor?"

[Maitre D'Hell]

I agree that modern menu language may have become...over-zealous? However, when I dine I do like to know what types of fungus are in the Wild Mushroom Risotto; I also see the waiter's eyes glaze after I ask him for the ingredients of yet another dish. I have heard that professional menu consultants (I can't believe people get paid for that!) say that listing a dish's components gives guests the understanding of an item's value; that is, you may be more inclined to pay $15 for that risotto once you know that it contains black trumpets, fresh porcinis, and is finished with truffle oil. Granted, a favorite of mine is "day-boat diver scallops" as if the scallops were hand-harvested that morning. Still, the lack of proper vocabulary to describe our food does come into play; "eggs benedict" is the only one I think the average American would understand.