‘I don’t expect chefs to be writers, just as they don’t expect me to make my own puff pastry.’
Typos a la carte — they’re a house specialty
Most people have a superhero fantasy. Some want superior strength, plus tights and a cape, to fight crime. Others imagine being able to fly, become invisible or see through walls.
Mine has always been tamer. No costume. No drama. In my fantasy, I enter a restaurant, order and sweetly ask the waiter if I can “hold on to the menu” during dinner. Then, using a distinctive purple pen, I discreetly copy-edit the descriptions of the dishes.
Caesar, not “caeser.” Shiitake, not “shitake.” Riesling, not “reisling” (though I’d quietly applaud restaurants that spell it wrong as long as the misspelling was consistent.)
“Who was that anonymous proofreader?” chefs would whisper to one another. Correct-a-girl strikes again! Eliminating menu mistakes, one restaurant at a time.
Given the state of the world, I know this fantasy is a bit of an embarrassment. Even in restaurants, there are far greater calamities than the occasional menu mistake. Skyrocketing food costs are squeezing already-slim margins. And anyone who watched the long-fought election campaign knows that it’s anything but fashionable to be an elitist.
I don’t expect chefs to be writers, just as they don’t expect me to make my own puff pastry. But given the existence of spell-checkers (the writing equivalent of frozen puff pastry dough), the number of errors is surprising.
I’m not talking about ethnic restaurants where the chef might not speak English, though the Chinese dish “vegetarian with tofu” I once spotted had a certain appeal. Nor would I pick on restaurants overseas, such as the one in Baghdad favored by foreign journalists that serves Chicken Gordon Blue.
What I’m talking about are the common, easily avoidable mistakes: “Deserts,” “marscapone” and “pizza’s.” My recent favorite remains the “mescaline salad served with satay grilled shrimp, cucumbers, tomatoes and avocado” at Yorktown Bistro in Arlington, Va.
Talk about your psychedelic flavor combinations.
Perhaps spell-checker programs offer a false sense of security. Word-processing safeguards also sadly fail to help a menu writer understand when to use quotation marks, a punctuation symbol some chefs appear to love as much as crispy pork belly.
Take Assaggi Mozzarella Bar in Bethesda, Md., where the menu, at least as replicated on Zagat.com, translates one pappardelle dish as “large flat pasta with a ‘veal, pork and beef’ bolognese.” (Is it fake meat? Or not really all three?)
The auto-correct feature is a potentially dangerous line of defense. That mesclun/mescaline problem could be the computer’s, not the chef’s. One mistake I’ve never seen on a menu but would actually savor is the one I lived in fear of when I worked in Boston. Despite my attempts to stop it, my Microsoft Word program would always change the word for Italy’s famous cured meat into what it assumed I meant to type. The night we closed an issue, I would have nightmares that when the magazine hit the stands, one of my reviews would describe “the delicate sweet and salty balance of melon and prostitute.”
Which is why there’s a real need for Correct-a-girl: always discreet, always anonymous, confident instead of awkward. In other words, nothing like me. But that’s what alter egos are for.
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