Places that spell menu items incorrectly
 

...how does it affect your opinion of the place and does it impact whether or not you give them your business?

For example, coffee shops that use "expresso" instead of "espresso." 10-15 years ago I could maybe understand, but these days you should really know the product you are selling. The coffee shop near my office, where for years I would get my morning cappuccino, went under new ownership last year. The new owners renamed it "..... Expresso Bar" and there was a marked decrease in quality. I haven't been going there for a while now.

The other example that has most recently affected me has been while looking at wedding facilities. Often as part of the packet places will send their full menu offerings. When I look at the menus and see glaring errors (e.g. chicken francese) the place is immediately off of the list. If they can't get common food spellings right, what does that say about the quality?

Thoughts, opinions, experiences?

I always used to chuckle at the way my favorite Chinese restaurant spelled "fried rice" as "fired rice". :) Didn't affect the quality of it, however. Quite tasty. ;) And, it didn't keep me away either. :D

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Online Guest Feedback Coordinator
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

Well in that case I think it may be able to be chalked up as either a typo or bad translation ;)

I'm wondering more along the lines of places with egregious misspellings of items that should really be spelled properly. With the "expresso bar" example, I mean come on - it's their primary business, the main good they are selling!

I generally share the OP's view. If an establishment can't spell their menu items correctly, I sense a lower level of quality. I realize it's (almost) all perception, but that's my feeling. I especially feel this way on a printed menu - somebody had to take (or should have taken) the time to proofread the text before it went to the printer.

I've been known to refuse my custom to places that print
atrocities on their menus such as "expresso" (though that
may be an accepted spelling in some language or another),
"buerre," and "foi gra."

There's no excuse for an establishment to spell anything wrong when it's the native language and spelling.

For a printed menu to ever come off the press wrong is inexcusable, but my favourite is the daily specials blackboard.

I have on occasion in my regular haunts grabbed the chalk, stood on a chair, and made amendments. It's usually met with a laugh from the staff. :D

In generil, mispellings anoy mee.

I have done that too! I can't remember what was mispelled but I found the dry eraser and pen and changed the spelling.. customers saw it but the staff was non existent..

it was followed by two customers waiting that came up to me saying "SIR do you work here as we have been waiting for 10 minutes and not even recongnized or seated.. i am very upset.. this place sucks" (well why don't u leave) BUT seeing a perfect chance for karma to come around grabbed two menus and said "OH I am so sorry.. we were just busy.. follow me" I walked them into the restaurant and sat them and was handing the menus when the bedazzled manager came up "who are you.. "

i said "oh just another customer assisting people you should.. have a nice day" .. i walked off and the look on the guilbile customers and bedazzled manager was priceless

I was with a friend at the time whose mouth was on the floor by this time in shock ..

the customers had to walk back to the waiting area and never looked at me.. It was so hiliarious!! Everyone else waiting just was trying to not laugh

In my area the board outside a resto, often lists La Sagna.

I remember a very upmarket Fish place in London, offering "screamed pinach" as a side dish (newly printed too ~ botheration! :D)

Ohhh the number of times that I changed the listing for "Menage a trois" on a wine board in bars/pubs in the Southeastern US to "Ménage à trois" :D

JP

Is that really misspelled though? Or is it just the U.S. English way of writing it?

For example, in Spanish "México" has the written accent mark on the "e" but when writing Mexico in English it's not necessary.

Just try to order from this menu

Some of you may have seen this before. May not be safe for work, depending on how susceptible you are to laughing out loud. :D

If a menu item is misspelled, it depends if looking at the menu can reason away the typo...if I look at it and think "I see where they went wrong", I might still go with that item. I can accept that. What creeps into my head is to not order a misspelled item, because if the menu doesn't spell it right, how is that any indication that the recipe is being followed?

Menu Malaprops
 

The funniest menu malapropisms I ever saw were in Cambodia.

You should read William Dalrymple's "In Xanadu."

And never mind menus, what about signs....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/globetr...7602861347501/

A little off topic, but I lose faith in a restaurant (especially Italian) when they can't pronounce Bruschetta. I've had servers even try to correct me when I order it. It seems to be rarer and rarer to find one that pronounces it correctly!

I would NEVER eat anyplace that uses "Tomoto" instead of "Tomato" :rolleyes:

A little off topic as well but still in the general ballpark of misspelled words, I passed a church a few days ago that had a sign in the front that had this message " Don't let your only ride to church be in the back of a hurst."

Maybe Expresso is served very quickly.

It really depends upon the place. At a nice restaurant, you pretty much want them to have the menu correct as you want attention to detail. That said, at an ethnic place they can spell it however they want and I won't care. Their grasp of English is going to be a lot better than my grasp of their language and their foreign-ness is why I'm there. Also, at a lower end restaurant, I'm less concerned with the spelling and more with the quality. I used to go to a diner type place that had "Pancakes" on the menu. We used to joke that quotes around it meant that it really could be anything and not pancakes.

"I would NEVER eat anyplace that uses "Tomoto" instead of "Tomato""

Same goes with how they say it. I would never go to a place that said, "tomato" instead of "tomato", but that's just me. :D

My cafeteria at work is hands down the worst I've ever been to. It's a typical govvie contract awarded to the lowest bidder. People routinely get sick from the food (the clam chowder 2 weeks ago had raw potatoes and onions).

Anyway, before I can rant further, "Montie Cristo" sandwiches and "St. Lewis Ribs" were on the menu this week.

There was an Indian restaurant in Clapham (South London) which, for years, had the solitary item of "floater" on the menu. Nobody I know was ever brave enough to order it.

Yes, I've had hours of amusement from this site! :)

Here are a few greatest hits from this thread from August:
Fun with Miss-spelled Menue's

What would you order from this compiled menu:

• Entree's: Potatoe and Leak Soup, Brushetta
• Main's: Chargrilled stake with brocoli and zuchini, Spagetti bolonaise, Jumbo club sandwhich
• Desert: Rasberry sunday, Choclate crossant's, Vannilla soufle, Deserts come with large Cuppachino.
  [source: Eat Your Words]
• Cows Lever
• http://rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order/
• meat roaf
• cohee
• Thai road peanut
• Garbage soup
• Aromatic Crispy Dick
  
  Then visit your hairdresser:
• a hair salon called "F U * K"

:D

Please add more!
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=728284

How could anyone choose between the garbage soup and the Aromatic crispy Dick?

Sounds like the renaming was an instance of wordplay, as in Express-o. It may be a dull and witless attempt, but ...

One that drives me nuts is when restaurants thy and pluralize the German "spätzle" and make it "spätzles", or much more commonly "spatzles". "Spätzle" is already plural and does not need an s.

In one case, the aroma could be a surprise.

A combination of the two might be a little confronting, too.

:D

Was that before or after the happy dish arrived? ;)

Nope. I'm 100% sure that it was clueless-ness and they really thought that "espresso" was "expresso." :(

"Expresso" doesn't really bother me much. Depends on how "Italian" the place is trying to be. I believe the English word is "Expresso" while the Italian word is "Espresso." There is no "X" in traditional Italian so they use "S" or "SS." So would you fault a restaurant in Italy serving food from "Messico?"

"Panini" is one of my pet peeves. First, "panini" is plural, panino is singular. Second panino does not exactly mean a sandwich in a certain style.

The pronunciation of "bruschetta" in the US does annoy me.

The word "pepperoni" is pretty annoying also but this is so embedded we can't do anything about it. "Pepperoni" in Italian means bell peppers.


Of course there are many people in the US of Italian descent who don't know how to pronounce their own names.

What really raise my suspicions about quality of service that I am considering are these kinds of things:

- who would ever study with an English professor who can't cook?

- work with an architect who can't dance?

- a dentist who doesn't understand miles and point?

I find typos, mispellings and malapropisms to be funny but not necessarily and indicator of the quality of the food ... even the expresso. ;)

Not great analogies ... being able to cook is not a prerequisite for
professing English. Ignorance or lack of attention to detail in the
front of the house, though, may well be an indication of same in
the kitchen.

By the same token, impeccable English is not even the merest indication of being able to cook. Having someone who is not the chef de cuisine botching a detail - be it a reservation, valet parking or spelling - is not necessarily a reflection on the kitchen.

To be fair, as you suggest - "may" is the key word. Often the front of the house and the kitchen are separate realms in significant ways. In some establishments at least. Competence or lack thereof in one is not necessarily indicative of a similar condition in the other. Since it is only "may", I would tend to judge the food on its own merits.

By all means, if illiteracies spoil one's appetite it becomes a part of the dining experience for that person and they would do well to avoid even those places with great food but poor language arts.

With two chefs and a career artist (read "server" :D) in the family all working in fine dining establishments in San Francisco, I hear plenty about front of the house and kitchen relationships - the good and the difficult.

I would have interpreted Expresso to be a brand name or trade name or whatever name. As such if a store wants to call itself Expresso, then it is free to call the drinks it serves Expresso too.

Did Frappuccino actually exist as a word before Starbucks used it?

Put it this way. Incompetency in the front of house is not a good sign
for the back of house.

As for food, if the menu is sufficiently illiterate, there is no chance that
the food will have a chance of being judged by me.

My favourite is when they write shiitake (as in the mushrooms) incorrectly by dropping the second i.