What's on the menu?

[RooFlyer]

In a recent post some-one asked why the Qantas menu couldn't be more about the passenger and less about Neil Perry (or something like that, can't find it now). I thought of that immediately when I went through the J menu for QF30 HKG-MEL recently.

Now I don't claim to be a great consumer of 'fancy' menus, and if I go to an Italian or say, Chinese restaurant I expect to not understand all the terms. That can be part of the enjoyment of new experiences. But for goodness sake, is it too much to expect that when Qantas presents an in-flight menu, one can reasonably understand what's on offer? In the below, I've circled the terms I don't know the meaning of:



Most of them are adjectives so you can understand what the meal will essentially be, but not in every case. I don't want "steak and chips" but equally I don't need a menu where some-one is just showing their proficiency in wan*ery.

(ps I didn't order anything from the menu - I had filled up at The Pier (and if you look at the menu I posted there, I understood it completely!! It was about the diner, not the chef.)

 

[love_the_life]

I understand the menus and what the circled items are but I see your point and agree it's rather pretentious - guess QF think they have a sophisticated clientele

 

[defurax]

Well, some words are simply made up anyway "sautéed" is neither French nor English.

 

[PaulST]

I often enjoy googling terms I've never heard when I'm out at a restaurant and learning something new. Qantas's inflight wifi, though, is somewhat lacking...

 

[kelvedon]

I've often thought there's a market for an app which translates these pretentious words

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I've often thought there's a market for an app which translates these pretentious words

Unless we get rid of all foreign ingredients, I'm not sure how they can be avoided? We'd be back to meat and three veg only. The only thing I could see to remive from the menu posted above would be description of the type of pasta, which arguably makes little difference.

At least menus are in English now!

 

[stevenaus]

Could not agree more with you Roo Flyer and have taken my paid Business trips to Singapore and Hong Kong back to their respective home based airlines being SQ and CX.

 

[anat0l]

This is taking the piss, right?


The dish is what it is. There's little to no over-inflation here. What's wrong with a bit of old fashioned asking for help? Ego too high?

I don't know what restaurants you go to; certainly I don't go to ones which charge over $300 for dinner, but this menu may have had some things I may not have known right off, but no more (or even less) "pretentious" than most other restaurants on the ground.

I remember only one restaurant (a good one) that had a small glossary at the back of the menu explaining some of the "terms" (or rather, foods and some techniques) that were on offer in the menu.

For the uninitiated:

• Kimchi is Korean spiced pickled cabbage, usually served as a meal accompaniment but can be incorporated into dishes as well
• Casarecce is a type of pasta, shaped like long tubes with a slit throughout their entire length. For this dish, it probably was not important at all to know what the pasta looked like.
• Fontina is a cheese; to be specific, an Italian soft cheese made from cow's milk
• Romesco is a Spanish sauce typically made from nuts and capsicum and traditionally eaten with fish
• Clafoutis is a French baked flan-like cake

So they have decided to put the names of those items on there rather than be long winded and go, for example, "Korean pickled cabbage stew...." etc. etc.. What is so pretentious about that? At least they are not as pretentious as some restaurants now which are really taking the mickey with fancying up their menu items with cooking techniques or terms, some which are (in earnest) completely unnecessary.

A classic one is a Croque Monsieur. To most, that's just a ham and cheese sandwich, although to be brutally thorough, it does, to stick to its original incarnation, need to have both the correct ingredients and technique.

What if we started "de-pretention-ising" dishes that we didn't know or seemed too complicated? Take the Swiss fondue, which is cheese melted into a liquid and typically mixed with some alcohol, where bits of food are dipped into the cheese and eaten. (Fondue comes from the French fondre, meaning to melt). What if we just called it Swiss melted cheese soup? We could make the same case for raclette, which is a large cheese which is heated until it starts melting, then this cheese is scraped off and eaten with other foods. Raclette is even less known outside Switzerland than fondue.

I'm surprised you understood The Pier's restaurant menu "completely", which means the following terms were not foreign to you at all and didn't scream of "w*nkery": buffalo mozzarella (as opposed to what many might know as mozzarella cheese); balsamico; endive; XO sauce (nothing to do with cognac); vinaigrette; kale; cured ham; brioche; five spice; sabayon. For that matter, you didn't circle "focaccia" in the menu above, unless you were not trying to labour on the point.


Finally, not to be brutally picky, but:

Most of them are adjectives

No, all of them are nouns.

Well, some words are simply made up anyway "sautéed" is neither French nor English.

Well sauté comes from French from the word sauter meaning to jump (sauté is the past participle, viz. "jumped"). Certainly, sauté (or sautée or plural variants) can be used in French to describe objects cooked as such. In English, it has become accepted to add "ed" to the word borrowed from French to form the past tense. So it's not as if they hold a monopoly on using that word or just pulled it out of where the sun don't shine.

 

[defurax]

Well sauté comes from French from the word sauter meaning to jump (sauté is the past participle, viz. "jumped"). Certainly, sauté (or sautée or plural variants) can be used in French to describe objects cooked as such. In English, it has become accepted to add "ed" to the word borrowed from French to form the past tense. So it's not as if they hold a monopoly on using that word or just pulled it out of where the sun don't shine.

You kind of missed the point here, the "accent aigu" on the "e" is not English. So the vegetables (or sex partners) are "sauteed" if you want to make a regular verb of it. If Neil feels that the "accent aigu" should be there, then maybe he should conjugate correctly "en genre et en nombre" and write "zucchinis sautés".

 

[anat0l]

You kind of missed the point here, the "accent aigu" on the "e" is not English. So the vegetables (or sex partners) are "sauteed" if you want to make a regular verb of it. If Neil feels that the "accent aigu" should be there, then maybe he should conjugate correctly "en genre et en nombre" and write "zucchini sautés".

Dictionary.com seems to have no problem with the acceptability of sautéed. You are right that it's just not English, but that's why the word was borrowed (or stolen, if you will) from the French in the first place.

Neil Perry is not the only one who I have seen do this and read it in many menus and cookbooks. If this thread is simply anti-Neil Perry then so be it, but if not then he doesn't hold a monopoly on the "error".

And the accent aigu continues to be added to words in English prose when it may not be completely necessary even if the accented letter itself does not belong to the English alphabet, for example, café, entrée (referring to the small course at the beginning of a meal, or the main course in America - both the accented and non-accented versions are deemed acceptable in English writing).

 

[RooFlyer]

This is taking the piss, right?


The dish is what it is. There's little to no over-inflation here. What's wrong with a bit of old fashioned asking for help? Ego too high?

I don't know what restaurants you go to; certainly I don't go to ones which charge over $300 for dinner, but this menu may have had somethings I may not have known right off, but no more (or even less) "pretentious" than most other restaurants on the ground.

I remember only one restaurant (a good one) that had a small glossary at the back of the menu explaining some of the "terms" (or rather, foods and some techniques) that were on offer in the menu.

For the uninitiated:

• Kimchi is Korean spiced pickled cabbage, usually served as a meal accompaniment but can be incorporated into dishes as well
• Casarecce is a type of pasta, shaped like long tubes with a slit throughout their entire length. For this dish, it probably was not important at all to know what the pasta looked like.
• Fontina is a cheese; to be specific, an Italian soft cheese made from cow's milk
• Romesco is a Spanish sauce typically made from nuts and capsicum and traditionally eaten with fish
• Clafoutis is a French baked flan-like cake

So they have decided to put the names of those items on there rather than be long winded and go, for example, "Korean pickled cabbage stew...." etc. etc.. What is so pretentious about that? At least they are not as pretentious as some restaurants now which are really taking the mickey with fancying up their menu items with cooking techniques or terms, some which are (in earnest) completely unnecessary.

A classic one is a Croque Monsieur. To most, that's just a ham and cheese sandwich, although to be brutally thorough, it does, to stick to its original incarnation, need to have both the correct ingredients and technique.

What if we started "de-pretention-ising" dishes that we didn't know or seemed too complicated? Take the Swiss fondue, which is cheese melted into a liquid and typically mixed with some alcohol, where bits of food are dipped into the cheese and eaten. (Fondue comes from the French fondre, meaning to melt). What if we just called it Swiss melted cheese soup? We could make the same case for raclette, which is a large cheese which is heated until it starts melting, then this cheese is scraped off and eaten with other foods. Raclette is even less known outside Switzerland than fondue.

I'm surprised you understood The Pier's restaurant menu "completely", which means the following terms were not foreign to you at all and didn't scream of "w*nkery": buffalo mozzarella (as opposed to what many might know as mozzarella cheese); balsamico; endive; XO sauce; vinaigrette; kale; cured ham; brioche; five spice; sabayon. For that matter, you didn't circle "focaccia" in the menu above, unless you were not trying to labour on the point.


Finally, not to be brutally picky, but:

Originally Posted by RooFlyer Most of them are adjectives

No, all of them are nouns.


<snip>.

Golly, there's a lot to go through there.

* No, its not taking the piss, as you elegantly phrase it ("Prenez la pisse" is the best Google Translate can come up with ... you can probably do better). It might have been described as a rant, but not mocking anything.

* Actually, I did ask the FA. Did I say that I didn't? The quip about the ego is just abuse.

* Thanks for the language and cuisine translations. You are obviously much more sophisticated and well travelled than me in the culinary sphere. There's obviously more to Switzerland than rosti!

* Yes, you are correct that I knew what all The Pier's menu terms meant, also 'focaccia' :shock: . You are 'surprised'; good for you!!

* Noun: A noun is a part of speech that denotes a person, animal, place, thing, or idea.
* Adjective: Adjectives are words that describe or modify other words. They can identify or quantify another person or thing in the sentence. Adjectives are usually positioned before the noun or the pronoun that they modify.

Romesco sauce: Romesco is describing the type sauce.
Fontina focaccia: Fontina is describing the type of cheese in the focaccia
Casarecce pasta: Casarecce is describing the type of pasta

Three of the five terms circled. ergo: "Most are adjectives." You may care to stick with cuisine and leave grammar alone.

 

[anat0l]

Actually, I did ask the FA. Did I say that I didn't?

So you learned something - good for you. So why this whole thread?

Yes, you are correct that I knew what all The Pier's menu terms meant, also 'focaccia' :shock: . You are 'surprised'; good for you!!

So just because you know what all those terms mean on one menu, when some of them are rather obscure as well, means that they aren't pretentious but another is. Just admit this is anti-Neil Perry and be done with it?

* Noun: A noun is a part of speech that denotes a person, animal, place, thing, or idea.
* Adjective: Adjectives are words that describe or modify other words. They can identify or quantify another person or thing in the sentence. Adjectives are usually positioned before the noun or the pronoun that they modify.

Romesco sauce: Romesco is describing the type sauce.
Fontina focaccia: Fontina is describing the type of cheese in the focaccia
Casarecce pasta: Casarecce is describing the type of pasta

Three of the five terms circled. ergo: "Most are adjectives." You may care to stick with cuisine and leave grammar alone.

We can argue this for a while to no avail, however when a noun is placed next to another one, at best its part of speech may be called an attributive noun. So "Romesco", "Fontina" and "Casarecce" can stand by themselves and be nouns. On the other hand, you could say "long pasta" where long is an adjective, and that word cannot stand on its own without further qualification. As attributive nouns, they function like adjectives, but part of speech wise it is, in my opinion, a bit of a stretch to call them adjectives, and certainly those words can be used as bona fide nouns.

Like your profession (unless you are an English teacher or English professor), I need to maintain good standards of grammar and I am not saying this just to be argumentative, viz. I know at least some of what I am saying to formulate an informed opinion, so stop belittling me.

 

[JohnM]

Whoa! Settle down, fellas . This is all a bit indigestible in the morning at SCL after a shower and shave while I contemplate where to find the Champagne in the new LA lounge (I'm on the upper floor and the bistro section is closed off for some repairs or some such.)

I'll be inspecting the lunch menu on my 1225 IB SCL-MAD flight very carefully .

 

[RooFlyer]

Whoa! Settle down, fellas . This is all a bit indigestible in the morning at SCL after a shower and shave while I contemplate where to find the Champagne in the new LA lounge (I'm on the upper floor and the bistro section is closed off for some repairs or some such.)

I'll be inspecting the lunch menu on my 1225 IB SCL-MAD flight very carefully .

Sorry JohnM ; dog with a bone and all that. The bistro section at SCL didn't last long! It was only being finished when I was there in April!

So you learned something - good for you. So why this whole thread?

So just because you know what all those terms mean on one menu, when some of them are rather obscure as well, means that they aren't pretentious but another is. Just admit this is anti-Neil Perry and be done with it?

We can argue this for a while to no avail, however when a noun is placed next to another one, at best its part of speech may be called an attributive noun. So "Romesco", "Fontina" and "Casarecce" can stand by themselves and be nouns. On the other hand, you could say "long pasta" where long is an adjective, and that word cannot stand on its own without further qualification. As attributive nouns, they function like adjectives, but part of speech wise it is, in my opinion, a bit of a stretch to call them adjectives, and certainly those words can be used as bona fide nouns.

Like your profession (unless you are an English teacher or English professor), I need to maintain good standards of grammar and I am not saying this just to be argumentative, viz. I know at least some of what I am saying to formulate an informed opinion, so stop belittling me.

Phew.

* Why the thread? Because I chose to say that I didn't understand five terms on a Qantas J menu and that I thought they were un-necessarily wan*er-ish.

* I didn't say that The Pier menu terminology wasn't pretentious; just that I happened to know all of the terms used.

* Anti Neil Perry? Perish the thought! I was actually talking about Qantas' description of the dishes. I don't think Mr Perry does this; I understand he 'inspires' the menus.

* On the grammar; the words quoted may well be able to stand on their own, but on the menu they weren't standing on their own. They were qualifying - describing - the words that followed. On grammar in general, I haven't touched the 'Grammar' thread, except for one recent time as its not a subject I'm terribly proficient in, although I usually muddle through with the basics such as nouns and adjectives. I'm told people enjoy reading my books.

 

[Steady]

raclette, which is a large cheese which is heated until it starts melting, then this cheese is scraped off and eaten with other foods. Raclette is even less known outside Switzerland than fondue.
.

Bruny Island Cheese Co do a cheese called "OTTO" and sell a cast iron pan to cook it in that sounds like its roots are from raclette

 

[JohnM]

Bruny Island Cheese Co do a cheese called "OTTO" and sell a cast iron pan to cook it in that sounds like its roots are from raclette

Might go well in your pizza oven, mate!

 

[Steady]

I'm sure it would

 

[JohnM]

Dang! The LA lounge bar doesn't open until 1100 :shock:. What's going on? This not PER - what about connecting pax whose clock is elsewhere :evil:.

I'll be waiting there at 1100. Need to fit in a couple of Louis Roederers before jumping on the IB bird - those nationalists only serve Cava .

I would hve preferred LA to MAD but it goes too late to make a decent connection to HEL.

Whoa! Settle down, fellas . This is all a bit indigestible in the morning at SCL after a shower and shave while I contemplate where to find the Champagne in the new LA lounge (I'm on the upper floor and the bistro section is closed off for some repairs or some such.)

I'll be inspecting the lunch menu on my 1225 IB SCL-MAD flight very carefully .

 

[RooFlyer]

JohnM, you'll probably have time for a few bevvies waiting for your bags to arrive on the carousel at MAD. My record was 60 minutes after I arrived there - to make it worse, they post the expected time of arrival, so you know exactly how long you are going to be doing essentially nothing except admiring their very nice wood panelling.

 

[JohnM]

JohnM, you'll probably have time for a few bevvies waiting for your bags to arrive on the carousel at MAD. My record was 60 minutes after I arrived there - to make it worse, they post the expected time of arrival, so you know exactly how long you are going to be doing essentially nothing except admiring their very nice wood panelling.

I'm connecting to HEL. My bag WILL go there .