I was looking through my photos from France this summer, looking for a suitable profile picture for Facebook, and man, I took a lot of pictures of us sitting around tables eating and drinking.
I found a couple of photos that I took of not-quite-right translations that I found in menus. (I warned you that you'd be hearing about my trip to France for way longer than you were going to want to. Promise kept.)
The first one was from the Restaurant L'estragon in Monaco-Ville, Monaco, where we stopped for lunch:
"Assorted Pork-butchery"
Okaaaay.
I'm sure that they meant this:
Rather than this:
It might be kind of hard to bring an entire butchery to the table. At any rate, none of us were brave or curious enough to order the butchery -- we settled for warm goat-cheese salads and omelettes.
Then there was this, on the menu at the Nid d'Aigle in Eze village:
"Grilled Lamb Shops"
Again, I'm sure they meant this:
Rather than this:
I ended up ordering this:
and two of these:
Which may explain why I found the menu so funny.
Lamb shops.
ReplyDeleteHeh.
Now I'm never going to say chops again.
And then there's me - I'm just generally amused by stupid stuff any time. And at least it was a translation; I still haven't figured out why 'assorted meat ends' at the Loblaws deli counter is supposed to be appetizing.
ReplyDeleteGirfriend, the beer had nothing to do with how funny the menu was...
ReplyDeleteI like my lamb shops with mint jelly.
ReplyDeleteI like your new header picture :-)
ReplyDeleteAh a glass of 1664 how it brings back memories of the last two summers., that and superb red wine.
ReplyDeleteThe funniest item on a restaurant menu was at St. Malo where they had « Jus de Chausettes » (old sock juice) on the menu for American style coffee. Mind you after spending the summer drinking expressos and allongés that is pretty much what it tasted like.;o)
Jen - Me neither. I might start saying 'pork shops' too.
ReplyDeleteBiblio - I hear you. "Meat ends" is not going to attract very many shoppers. And I would seriously wonder about the ones it does.
Jazz - You're probably right. *grin* But it helped.
Mrs. G. - I like my lamb shops with new potatoes and peas. And a corner convenience store.
Cassi - THANKS! I was wondering if anyone had noticed. I like it too.
Big Brother - I really liked the 1664. And I picked up an espresso habit when I was in France. Which is weird because it's not like you can't get espresso here, but I'd never tried it until after dinner our first night in Nice, at the restaurant on the beach (The Blue Beach) that is in the second picture in the post. I was hooked. And also the rosé wine that they have in the south. It was so good, and only a few euros a bottle.
Oh yes the wine. Even their table wine was really good. A waiter explained that they often got their wine from small vineyards which could not export since they didn’t have enough output so the wine stayed local. This meant that you got really superb wines for very few Euros. I’d have my wine every night for supper, a habit that I’ve taken up again upon getting home except that it costs way more than in France and the quality is probably less.
ReplyDelete