Nice clean squids and the Bali Grill
Most of them are typos and strange-sounding words we don’t understand. But even if we eliminate those, the internet has loads-o’-fun with restaurant menus. All (allegedly) real examples:
Snow crab legs and measles
Spicy cold children
Bean juice steams the sparerib
Kun Bow Pig Intestine
Hamburger with sheeps
The spicy field chicken
Steamed red crap with ginger
Most hilarious menu entries arise from misunderstood translations, phonetic spellings, and cultural disagreement over what constitutes food. But we always assume the menu writer meant something else, and we feel a secret smugness at knowing what the menu should say instead.
Not so fast, cowboy.
For years my BFF and I had a weekly ritual. Calamari and Chardonnay at the Bali Grill. Every Monday after work we met for gossip, encouragement, unsolicited advice … typical BFF therapy session. And every Monday we snickered about the menu description of our favorite appetizer:
Batter-dipped calamari
Nice clean squids, deep fried and served with chili jam
“Nice clean squids!” we chuckled, “As if a restaurant would claim to serve any other kind!”
Then, one dark day, the Bali Grill closed. We’d always enjoyed having the place to ourselves … apparently you can’t run a business on two customers a week. But what would we do now, without our calamari fix?
“Never fear!” my friend, a gourmet cook, announced. “We’ll make our own!”
So a dinner party was planned. My friend went to the fish market and bought several pounds of fresh, authentic calamari-on-the-hoof, so to speak. Although I had offered to help, my kitchen skills involve dusting my stove once a week, whether it needs it or not.
How hard could it be? I arrived mid-afternoon to help prepare for the dinner. Let’s just say the sink was full of the most disgusting, foul-smelling, scary-looking stuff I’ve ever seen. It looked like something the plumber would pull out of the garbage disposal after you fed it old tennis shoes and rubber gloves. And the cleaning process involved putting your hands in gray slime and goo and tentacles. Peer pressure is a powerful force. Not wanting to appear weak, I fought back the nausea and did my duty as the friend of a good cook. Through some magic (to which I contributed little), a lovely meal resulted.
But, every now and then, I think back to the menu at the Bali Grill. It was charming and it made us smile, but not because it was a cultural or language disconnect. The communication was correct. They were, indeed, nice clean squids, and someone had prepared them for us. Properly. They wanted us to know that. We always tipped generously, but if I’d known then what I know now, no tip would have been enough.
The lesson? Don’t be so quick to judge. You might be the one who is wrong. Just the same, I’d be tempted to order the hamburger with sheeps.
You know, just to see ….
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