Restaurant menus are like blurbs for real estate properties: colorful, descriptive, and mostly unintelligible language conveys the aim to sell, sell, sell.
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve all been in a restaurant with three chef’s hats next to its name, salivating over a gigantic menu you can’t see over the top of, studying the matching overpriced meals, which you know will be served in mediocre portions on huge plates that barely fit on your tiny table. That’s the long and the short of it.
If you’re a freelance writer, you have no business being in that restaurant in the first place. The restaurants that you normally frequent don’t have hats. In fact they don’t even have chefs wearing hats!
So you’re seated as comfortably as you can be, considering that your back is jammed hard against the person behind you. Your taste buds are frolicking frantically with anticipation, completely unaware that your dining experience—and your wallet— will most likely leave with a bad case of bellyache by the time you’ve finished.
Studying the rich prose, stuffed with flambéed adjectives, and carefully sautéed with creamy adverbs, your imagination starts to slobber. You read at length about how lovingly and painstakingly the food was prepared and how fresh the ingredients are. This is a relief because freshness is not something you can take for granted. Particularly in the restaurants you usually eat at.
Excitement dims to mild confusion as you study the culinary lexis. Food is jerked, caramelized, deglazed, brined, steeped, dipped, brushed, marinated, and otherwise anointed. It is then nestled, rested, stacked, balanced, carefully placed, and dressed to impress.
Satisfied that your food will be treated with the care and consideration of Cleopatra’s coronation, you decide on an entrée. While you can’t find an entrée section, having eaten out before, you know that another word for entrée is starter. Your ravenous brain goes into overdrive as you try to decide whether your starter should be grilled, broiled, roasted, slow cooked, twice cooked, or poached. It probably doesn’t matter because it will all be done to perfection. You scan the menu, however, looking for something fried to perfection but the word fried has been carefully avoided. So you decide that pan seared is close enough. Then your eagle eye spots the word carpaccio. The menu says the beef is aged prime and while you’re not sure what cooking process is used in carpaccio-ing something, you order it anyway. The accompanying truffle oil and parmigiano reggiano practically sells the dish anyway. That’s the starter out of the way.
