I think I have an aversion to lengthy and/or silly food descriptions.
I include two distinct types under this category:
“Themed” restaurants that can’t just call it a bacon cheeseburger, it has to be “J. Ellwood ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson’s Heapin’ Big Tower O’ Beef ‘N’ Saturates” or some such nonsense.
Fancy restaurants where everything on the menu is “pan-fried” (as opposed to fried in what, exactly? A shoe? A dustbin lid? The sous-chef’s jockstrap?) and served on a bed of this or drizzled with a coulis of the other.
So when we go out to eat, I’ll paraphrase the menu. I’ll order “potato skins” in a diner, not “crispy filled potato jackets with sour-cream and chilli”. In a fancy place I’ll have “the bass”, not “Cornish sea bass en papillotte with a balsamic rosemary reduction and crushed sea-salted potatoes”.
My wife, on the other hand, loves all that stuff, and so do a lot of my friends. They’ll happily read off half a paragraph from the menu when ordering, and look like they really appreciate the detail.
I figure, the server knows what’s on the menu, he or she is likely just going to write down “chicken” or something, so let’s make things simple. And yet it’s surprising how often they’ll look blank until I gesture at the menu and add a few helpful adjectives - even if it is the only dish vaguely comprising that ingredient on the whole menu! Of course, at this point, my wife gives me that “See what happens when you try to be smart” look.
So - are you a full menu person or a shorthander?
And serving staff - what’s the deal here? Are we supposed to order by the full pretentious and/or cringeingly cheesy name? Do you just like seeing customers squirm at having to ask for a Big Barney Burrito Bite?
I’m like you. I always wanted to open a restaurant, however, called, “Soft Pore Corn” and all the menu items would have porn sounding descriptions… Like the “Blue Veined Weiner”, served “all the way and throbbing”, of course.
As vs. deep-fried, I assume. “Pan-fried” is just a bit of oil, compared to being submerged in it for deep frying.
Edit: Damn you, pulykamell!
I try to give enough description so as to avoid any potential confusion by the server. Their job is annoying enough without me being vague. So in the first example I’d probably ask for the “J. Elwood beef tower” - giving the first part of the name, the important ingredient, and a little more description. In your bass example, assuming only one bass dish was on the menu, I’d probably stick with “Cornish sea bass” or perhaps just “the bass” if the restaurant was quiet enough to prevent any misunderstandings - my voice can be quiet at times.
Well, in a fancy restaurant it would never occur to me to read back the entire dish description as the name of it. Generally I’ll say enough of what it is that there isn’t really room for confusing it with another dish on the menu. If there are two sea bass dishes I’ll say “macadamia sea bass” (assuming that is what I want) and that always works fine.
In restaurants where the dishes are simply given stupid names that aren’t descriptive of what they are, I generally skip it. The Honorable Judge Rufus T. Russell Memorial Teriyaki Chicken Burger will do just fine being ordered as the teriyaki chicken burger. But if I’m in a Burger King I’m going to say “Whopper” rather than “the cheeseburger bigger than a quarter pounder.”
And I just say tall, grande, venti at Starbucks because while the names may be stupid, being a dick to cashiers just working for the man doesn’t give me any pleasure and I am most certain that Howard Schultz will not receive notification of my little act of rebellion.
Well okay, but I think they just do it because it sounds fancier than plain “fried”. I mean, if it didn’t say “**pan-**fried calf’s liver” would you really imagine that it was coated in batter and deep-fried?
The first line of your post was my immediate thought seeing the thread title. I have to reconcile the fact that I value clear and unambiguous communication with the fact that I hate cutesy or pretentious menu item names. So I’ll say just enough of it to make it clear what I’m ordering, but not the entire name.
Your shorthand examples are a little too extreme for me because they don’t really use any part of the name given on the item, and requires the server to do some sort of mental processing to figure out what you are asking for, which is an area prone to miscommunication, and ultimately, error. So I’d say:
“Crispy potato jackets”. Enough of the key-words from the item name in there that sufficient clarity is achieved without spouting off the whole thing. Unless of course, the menu also offers “Crispy filled potato jackets with sour-cream and guacamole” in which case I’d have to get more specific.
Meanwhile, in certain fast food establishments, this type of shorthand is normal for regular clientele. For example, when I order an Italian beef, it’s “beef, wet, hot & sweet.” (An Italian beef that’s been dipped in gravy, served with hot giardiniera and sweet bell peppers.) However, I would only expect this nomenclature to be standard in beef stands around Chicagoland, not anywhere else.
Anyhow, when I order at a restaurant I don’t read the full description. I just say “I want the chicken-wild mushroom” or “ribeye with bernaise,” etc. Whatever the minimum descriptive and unique identifier of the dish is.
Well, I have had deep-fried liver at mid-range restaurants, so I appreciate the extra description. (edit: I should add, this was at Eastern European restaurants. I guess generally, without further description, I would expect fried liver to be pan-fried, but I have had experience to the contrary.)
My second job is a server at T.G.I. Friday’s. Fortunately, we don’t have many crazy names for our items. We call potato skins “Loaded Potato Skins” and our burgers are named after their ingredients (i.e. the Bacon Cheeseburger). Actually, our menu might oversimplify things. For instance, a skillet with melted cheese, sauteed peppers and onions, six shrimp tossed in bruschetta, and two scoops of garlic mashed potatoes is called “Sizzling Chicken and Shrimp.” Are these names less fun, because they aren’t as wacky? Probably, but why should ordering your food be the fun part of the meal anyways?
I actually prefer my guests cut to the chase when ordering. Even though we don’t have cheesy names, some are really long and difficult to say. Take, for example, the Cedar Seared Salmon Pasta. People have a tough time spitting that out. When I repeat their order, I just say, “Ok, the salmon pasta.”
There is a local Mexican restaurant that has a good lunch special. It’s called a “Speedy Gonzalez.” Honestly, I have to sit there and ask for a friggin’ Speedy Gonzalez.
My dad once thought he was being clever by placing his order this way:
“Hamburger. F F. Coffee.”
The waitress was confused by “F F” and he explained that he knew she was going to write it down that way, so that’s why he said it that way.
Um, no. she expects to HEAR “French fries” and then write down “F F.” When you SAY “F F” it’s confusing. She’s not taking dictation.
(Besides the fact that it was mighty rude of him to just bark out his order like that instead of saying, “I’ll have a hamburger with French fries and coffee, please,” like a normal person. But he was never big on politeness anyway.)
I refuse to use Stone Cold Creamery’s stupid names for ice cream sizes (“Like It,” “Love It,” and “Gotta Have a Coronary” (okay, it’s “Gotta Have It,” but have you *seen *the size of that thing??)) I just ask for a “small,” with the mix-ins I want. Nobody has ever taken issue about it. The closest that’s ever happened is that the person asked me, “You want a Like It?” and I said, “Yes. A small, please.” Problem solved.
When I was a kid and went out for breakfast with my parents, my dad always used to order his eggs “over difficult.” I was a teenager before I realized there was no such thing as “over difficult” and that was just my dad being silly. I *did *always wonder why the waitperson looked at him funny…
