Restaurant/Bar Annoyances

[*Deborah*]

I've seen al'fredo, allfreddo, al'freddo, al Fredo, al'Fredo, and other variations of alfredo. I'm expecting to come across "al Frodo" next.

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Only if you're eating in the Shire. I hope.

[jsolomon]

I've seen al'fredo, allfreddo, al'freddo, al Fredo, al'Fredo, and other variations of alfredo. I'm expecting to come across "al Frodo" next.

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And then some anti-snobbish wag will make "al Bilbo" with milk, velveeta, and margarine.

[DeVeaux]

My fave was a guy who ordered a "car-fay" ( we assumed he meant carafe) of our best wine to impress his date.

Such ignorance is not limited to foodies - I once asked a clerk in a large record shop if they had Bruce Cockburn's new record in yet - he looked at me like I was a cretin and said, Actually, it's pronounced "COCK-BURN". I replied that actually, in Canada where Bruce is from, it's pronounced "CO-BURN" - ans asked if he grew up on the Canadian border like I did.

[...tm...]

Another linguistic sin is the use of the word "off" in cooking action sentences.

A hilarious rant about it on Fire and Knives.... (scroll down to Frying "off")

Andrea

http://tenacity.net

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I thought that I was the only one bothered by this, but I seem to have the exact same thought as fireandknives, namely, "ooh, that makes it sound much more technical!"

Of course, I'm sure that my scientific jargon would probably annoy far more people than kitchen jargon. And don't get me started on medical jargon.

[Almass]

My fave was a guy who ordered a "car-fay" ( we assumed he meant carafe) of our best wine to impress his date.

Maybe this guy is not as ignorant as you put it and maybe he is a fine connaisseur in case he ordered a bottle of your best wine and asked to have the bottle carafer which is what I understand from your post.

It is acceptable and highly advisable to "Carafer" a good young wine or "Decanter" a vintage fine wine.

The idea to transpose a young wine into a Carafe is to aerate the wine and get rid of extra tanin thus revealing the beauty of the wine. You really should not drink wine immediately after the bottle is uncorked and wait at least for few minutes by swirling the wine around to oxigenate in your glass.

Carafer is valid for both red and certain white wines. You should give a little time for the aeration before tasting the wine and if you are familiar with the restaurant, they could carafer your wine in advance.

On the connaisseur and fashion scale, carafer is pretty high on the list and people who do so are not as ignorant as they seem to be. On the other hand people who do not know this particular wine tournure, would draw a wrong conclusion.

I will leave the Decanter part for another time.

[Willly]

"I'll have a biscotti..."

A biscotto, some biscotti

[abadoozy]

One restaurant here in my home town advertised not one, not two, but three years running their annual Christmas buffet. It included, among the ubiquitous prime rib and glazed ham, "Duck ala Ronge."

Three years in a row.

What do you think it could be? Free range duck, in the style of the free-range chicken eggs I buy at the local co-op? Duck with a range sauce (is that like Ranch dressing?) Because, they really, really couldn't misspell a l'orange that badly, three years in a row, could they?

Yes, they could. I'm convinced this town has the worst restaurants (with one or two bright, shining exceptions) in the country.

[*Deborah*]

My fave was a guy who ordered a "car-fay" ( we assumed he meant carafe) of our best wine to impress his date.

Maybe this guy is not as ignorant as you put it and maybe he is a fine connaisseur in case he ordered a bottle of your best wine and asked to have the bottle carafer which is what I understand from your post.

It is acceptable and highly advisable to "Carafer" a good young wine or "Decanter" a vintage fine wine.

The idea to transpose a young wine into a Carafe is to aerate the wine and get rid of extra tanin thus revealing the beauty of the wine. You really should not drink wine immediately after the bottle is uncorked and wait at least for few minutes by swirling the wine around to oxigenate in your glass.

Carafer is valid for both red and certain white wines. You should give a little time for the aeration before tasting the wine and if you are familiar with the restaurant, they could carafer your wine in advance.

On the connaisseur and fashion scale, carafer is pretty high on the list and people who do so are not as ignorant as they seem to be. On the other hand people who do not know this particular wine tournure, would draw a wrong conclusion.

I will leave the Decanter part for another time.

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On the other hand, I have a friend who ordered a carafay of orange juice at a hangover breakfast long ago. He was simply mispronouncing carafe.

[Milagai]

Yes, they could. I'm convinced this town has the worst restaurants (with one or two bright, shining exceptions) in the country.

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now there's an idea for a new thread: a competition for the

town with the worst restaurants

what is your town, do you mind sharing?

and another thing, i am sure this has been posted before in many places,

but probably bears repetition.

what IS with the whole "chai tea" misunderstanding?

chai merely means tea, in hindi and most indian languages,

as also in chinese (cha), japanese, etc etc.

so phrases like "XXX with chai spices" makes no sense at all:

what, do they sprinkle tea leaves in it?

people are mixing up the idea of "chai" which is merely

regular tea, with "masala chai" which is the (now getting more popular)

spiced tea as perfected in the roadside tea stalls of india:

hot tea, with milk, sugar, and spices e.g. ginger, cardamom, black pepper,

maybe cinnamon, etc.

saying "chai tea" is like saying "tea tea".

if you ask for "chai" in an indian restaurant, you'll

get just regular tea, unless the waiter is aware of the confusion

and may clarify: do you want "masala chai";

and if you say yes, then you will get the spiced tea....

why is that so hard for all the corporate types to remember when

they are doing their manufacturing, packaging, etc....

grrrr

milagai

[Busboy]

My fave was a guy who ordered a "car-fay" ( we assumed he meant carafe) of our best wine to impress his date.

Maybe this guy is not as ignorant as you put it and maybe he is a fine connaisseur in case he ordered a bottle of your best wine and asked to have the bottle carafer which is what I understand from your post.

It is acceptable and highly advisable to "Carafer" a good young wine or "Decanter" a vintage fine wine.

The idea to transpose a young wine into a Carafe is to aerate the wine and get rid of extra tanin thus revealing the beauty of the wine. You really should not drink wine immediately after the bottle is uncorked and wait at least for few minutes by swirling the wine around to oxigenate in your glass.

Carafer is valid for both red and certain white wines. You should give a little time for the aeration before tasting the wine and if you are familiar with the restaurant, they could carafer your wine in advance.

On the connaisseur and fashion scale, carafer is pretty high on the list and people who do so are not as ignorant as they seem to be. On the other hand people who do not know this particular wine tournure, would draw a wrong conclusion.

I will leave the Decanter part for another time.

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pretty dubious. Even if he were aksing to have his wine aerated, he would have, first, ordered a specific bottle and, second, likely conjugated the verb. "Can you carafe that for me?"

Or he would have said "decant" - I've never actually heard anyone use the verb "carafer" in the U.S.

[DeVeaux]

It happened at the Holiday Inn Restaurant in Niagara Falls, NY back when I was in college.

Believe me, we did not get any wine connaisseurs there wanting to "carafer" their

wine.

We got dumb-ass tourists who couldn't pronounce big fancy words.

[NulloModo]

Personally none of these terms bug me. Actually, it does kind of bug me when people decide to be grammar nazis about them though.

If you are in Italy, then by all means, order a biscotto, or pronounse bruschetta as 'broo-sketta' (or however it is properly pronounced).

If in France, don't say with au jus. I mean, there is no reason to butcher the local language when amongst the people.

However, certain foreign terms, au jus, biscotti, bruschetta, etc, have been more or less adopted into the english language, and their being transformed a bit makes sense to me. We haven't gotten used to saying just 'jus' we have come to understand that sort of 'gravy' to be 'au jus', and it isn't proper grammar in English to say "I'll have the turkey gravey" you say "I'll have the turkey with gravey". Therefore, a roast beef sandwhich with "au jus" makes perfect sense.

Now, if the menu is entirely in the foreign language perhaps it is different, but when it is just an add on to an english language menu item, whats the big deal? Au Jus in French can mean with gravey, au jus in English can mean just the gravey part. Same with entree, let it mean what they want it to mean in other places, it means main course here now.

[touaregsand]

Yes, they could. I'm convinced this town has the worst restaurants (with one or two bright, shining exceptions) in the country.

←

now there's an idea for a new thread: a competition for the

town with the worst restaurants

what is your town, do you mind sharing?

and another thing, i am sure this has been posted before in many places,

but probably bears repetition.

what IS with the whole "chai tea" misunderstanding?

chai merely means tea, in hindi and most indian languages,

as also in chinese (cha), japanese, etc etc.

so phrases like "XXX with chai spices" makes no sense at all:

what, do they sprinkle tea leaves in it?

people are mixing up the idea of "chai" which is merely

regular tea, with "masala chai" which is the (now getting more popular)

spiced tea as perfected in the roadside tea stalls of india:

hot tea, with milk, sugar, and spices e.g. ginger, cardamom, black pepper,

maybe cinnamon, etc.

saying "chai tea" is like saying "tea tea".

if you ask for "chai" in an indian restaurant, you'll

get just regular tea, unless the waiter is aware of the confusion

and may clarify: do you want "masala chai";

and if you say yes, then you will get the spiced tea....

why is that so hard for all the corporate types to remember when

they are doing their manufacturing, packaging, etc....

grrrr

milagai

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Masala has too many syllables?

Thanks.

[TongoRad]

Masala has too many syllables?

Thanks.

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And people would just pronounce it MAR-sala anyway...

[Milagai]

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Masala has too many syllables?

Thanks.

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[NulloModo]

Masala has too many syllables?

Thanks.

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I think it is more likely that we already have a word for tea - that being tea. When 'chai' was introduced big time into the US market (through Coffee Beanery, Starbucks, and the like) it was masala chai. However, there being no other chais around that the average consumer would no about, and the marketing people probably wanting to make it easy to remember, and not sound too foreign, most likely just shortened to plain old chai.

By now if your average US consumer asks for chai, they expect masala chai. If they want plain tea, they as for tea. Again, just the way it has been adopted into the language, no real reason to change it...

[ludja]

sillier than usual post...

Edited June 29, 2005 by ludja (log)

[*Deborah*]

I can't express how that depresses me, to never mind striving for accuracy, since it's a fait accompli.

For the record, I say bruschetta correctly, and will go out of my way not to use entrée when I mean main course.

[Pan]

Masala has too many syllables?

Thanks.

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I think it is more likely that we already have a word for tea - that being tea. When 'chai' was introduced big time into the US market (through Coffee Beanery, Starbucks, and the like) it was masala chai. However, there being no other chais around that the average consumer would no about, and the marketing people probably wanting to make it easy to remember, and not sound too foreign, most likely just shortened to plain old chai.[...]

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Same with "latte," another one that annoys me and doubtless doesn't bug you at all.

[laurenmilan]

By now if your average US consumer asks for chai, they expect masala chai.  If they want plain tea, they as for tea.  Again, just the way it has been adopted into the language, no real reason to change it...

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That's ok... most folks are so trained on powdered chai mixes that they really don't know what masala chai actually TASTES like!

[Milagai]

By now if your average US consumer asks for chai, they expect masala chai.  If they want plain tea, they as for tea.  Again, just the way it has been adopted into the language, no real reason to change it...

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what's so difficult about saying "tea" and "spiced tea".

that's what chai and masala chai translate to....

if it is sooo hard to remember / pronounce / etc.

milagai

[Milagai]

Same with "latte," another one that annoys me and doubtless doesn't bug you at all.

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[Pan]

Same with "latte," another one that annoys me and doubtless doesn't bug you at all.

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mea culpa!

so should i say "cafe latte", or what is the right thing to say?

milagai

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Yes. "Caffe latte" literally means "coffee [with] milk." "Latte" simply means "milk," and that's what you'd get if you ordered "latte" in an Italian bar. (Bars in Italy are places to get both soft and hard drinks plus panini, croissants, etc.)

[cakewalk]

So what's the difference between a cafe au lait and a caffe latte and a plain old coffee with milk (hold the sugar)? I know that there's gonna be some steaming in here somewhere, but I'm not sure where.

I squirm when people say 'pita bread.' It's just pita, folks. The 'bread' part is a given, pita ain't gonna be anything else. Same with 'challa bread.' Oy.

[WHS]

A new Italian restaurant opened last week--menu lists "Muscles Marinara". Someone at work was raving about their chicken "Fran-CHAYZ".