Funny items on menus

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Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:27 pm

I travel a lot and often see funny translations on menus.

I've seen amongst others :

Small cock in red wine
Veal with the Milanese Woman
Cat (fish)
Small pieces of fish cooked in hot grease

This evening I saw one of the best, and of course it's a typo rather than a translation error, so it took a second or so for the penny to drop because it's in an upmarket hotel in an English speaking country :

8OZ ANUS RUMP STEAK

I choose another item from the menu.

Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:32 pm

A friend of my parents' was once at an Israeli restaurant.

The Hebrew word root K-B-D can mean liver, heavy, or honor. So the menue translated kabed oaf (chicken liver) as... Respect the Chicken.

That same menu also had "dessert" as "last dose".

Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:39 pm

In China I have ordered the "Pork fat in boiled down pork water".

It was literally lumps of Pork Fat simmered in pork stock.

It was ok actually, slightly greasy, but the stock was fine. I didn't want to chew on the fat as it was very rubbery looking.

Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:40 pm

^^

That's great!

Edit - I meant the "respect the chicken" remark. Mugatu, that sounds disgusting.

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:40 am

I run into that over in Eastern Europe when we go out to the villages. The one example that sticks in mind was " Father meat in grease"

Personally I think Japan had the best idea. The restaurants there just handed out menu's that had nothing but pictures.

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:23 am

in tallinn i have eaten deep fried pig ear which was lovely,quite similar to
pork scratchings here in the UK.
in praha i did eat a whole plate of raw goose breast,now that was different and would probably try again.

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:40 am

Two weeks or so ago I was in the supermarket, lining up the get rid of my money, and there this delivery-guy came to bring new stock.
What he had in his boxes was, to say the least, surprising. He had like 6 boxes full with pig-heads!

Another interesting article in that supermarket are the frogs they sell there, alive of course...

But hey, I guess these things still don't beat the jar-o-seahorse that can be found in just about any pharmacy around here...

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:20 am

I've had fried blood in Nepal, deep fried sparrow(?) in Burma and even took my dinner for walkies in Istanbul before eating it (good doggy) but in Romania in August I pick up a jar of CRAP.

And it was. According to my Moldovan better half, it is a delicacy, some sort of seafood. tasted like shit though. I'll dig out the lid and post it when I get the chance.

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:38 am

it was in a restaurant in china that touted itself to to be 'western' that I noticed something funny on the menu.
The menu attempted to have english translations...or at least partial descriptions of the items.

One item I think was a salad...had an entry next to it stating it was 'like screwing in spring rain'.

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:40 am

I once had to decline sheeps eyes in the Middle East.

Now I have two basic rules of life that I observe rigorously.

One - Don't eat anything that's looking back at you

Two - Never play a sport where the ball is harder than your testicles.

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 9:18 am

In Spain...

The menu said "Chicken inside her" ...rather than "Chicken in cider". Confused

Always comes out moist !

-7.75

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:52 am

sign seen in the virgin islands, instead of pick you own live lobster from the tank it sead "search life lobster in a pool"

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:57 pm

GordonBennett mentioned Moldova, which reminds me the menus there always used to crack me up.

First of all, most menus resembled a small developing country's phone book with more than 60 pages of offerings. Then, most items were translated to things like Pork Royale, Pork Excellence, Pork Winter Bliss, Pork Cordru, Pork Sublime, Pork Elisabeth, Pork Diane, and so on... completely uninformative, except in some restaurants the menu items had numbers in the description like vegetable soup with tomato, carrots, onion, and seasonings (1, 2, 0.5, 0.2, 0.1, 0.1, 0.04).

I never had any idea what on earth these things could be, but discovered that didn't matter much because when I asked the waiter it usually turned out the kitchen could only prepare maybe 5% of what was listed (...perhaps the chef didn't know what all those things were or what the numbers meant either?).

In any case, the food was nearly always excellent and Moldova was one of my favorite Eastern Europe countries to work in. I remember a particularly fun dinner one summer night when the restaurant's cellar ran out of chardonnay sauvignon. We all liked the first wine so much that someone in our group decided to call for a bottle of chardonnay, a bottle of sauvignon, and a pitcher to mix the two (1, 1 you might say)! Embarassed

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:36 pm

The adorable people at our local Chinese buffet used to totally crack me up with their less successful attempts to label some of the dishes when they first opened. Personal favorites were "Butter with Potatoes", which, if you ask me, is just getting your priorities straight, and the slightly more boggle-inducing "Chopped Spanish with Cheese".

As it was spinach, the "Soylent Green is people!" line immediately ran through my head.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 3123

"Manderin drained in sugar fruit oil"

Found that in Tblisi. I think it meant oranges in syrup Confused

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:51 pm

I had lunch once at a company canteen in Spain, and on the menu was :

"Chicken with cum in"

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:19 pm

One of the books I bought today has a whole selection

Boiled Frogfish

Fried internal part of chicken with mushrooms nad deep fried fist with vegetables

Cold shredded children and sea blubber in spicy sayce

Climbing with a hen

Indonesian Nazi Goreng

Buttered saucepans and fried hormones

Fried fishermen

Fried friendship

Utmost of chicken fried in bother

Roguefart

To show a few

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:01 pm

falnsb wrote:

I had lunch once at a company canteen in Spain, and on the menu was :

"Chicken with cum in"

Good God, what did it tatse like?

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

@CY
awful
It had chicken in it

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:43 pm

French Toast

Why?

As a teenager I worked in a kitchen at a summer camp. One summer we had a young French student working there on a 'work & travel' set-up.

One Sunday morning we made French Toast.

He asked: 'whot iz zis?'
We said: 'French Toast.'
'French Toast?'
'Yes, French Toast.'
'I due not know zis, zat iz not French.'
'But it's French Toast.'
'We due not ate toast like zat; I 'ave never seen zat before.'

He just laughed and shook his head. Wink

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 29 Feb 2008 Posts: 5

Our local Indian has a dish with sauted peas and fried opinions.

Not so funny now I come to write it, must have been the tiger karger that gave it more humour

Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:23 pm

When I was traveling around Laos, the menus usually had some misspellings in them and you had to use some imagination to understand them totally.
In one place they had crabs in the menu, although it was spelled "crap".
I didn't take the risk, who knows if actually was poo they were selling...

Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:46 pm

It's not a menu item, but a good sign that I saw anyway. In a tourist tat shop in Amsterdam, the sign on the outside of the shop said (In English):

Quote:

ONLY 2 KIDS ALLOWED AT A TIME. AND NO FUCKING AROUND.