To be irritated by wanky and pretentious restaurant terminology?

[ManicUnicorn]

I should start by saying I love food and eating out, it's one of life's great pleasures IMO. But I'm finding myself increasingly irritated by restaurants using pretentious and fancy names for stuff and trying to dress things up as more exotic than they actually are.

A new restaurant has just opened here and I was looking at their Christmas menu earlier, and amongst lots of the wankery on there one of the deserts really stood out 'Rich orchard apples in crumble with creme anglais'... so that'll be apple crumble and custard then? Why not just say what it is? A hearty and much loved traditional British pudding that's been enjoyed for years, you don't need to dress it up as anything else! Oh and there's so much 'jus' on there as well, it's just fucking gravy for Christ's sake!

It reminds me of when I went out for a Christmas meal a few years ago. Set menu, and were all wondering what the hell one the starters was. Someone googled it and guess what? It was just a fancy name for soup.

I don't know if I'm just a bit common but I think there's something so pretentious about this kind of thing. Food is food at the end of the day.

If a menu has apple slaw written on it, it’s a very big hint that it’s not going to have cabbage in it, and it will not be coleslaw. It will have apple, and will taste at least a bit of apple
So that's just an apple then.

Tomorrow at work I'm throwing caution to the wind and deconstructing tiffin. I'm going to serve a pat of butter in a thimble, a square of bournville and a raisin in one end of a sick bowl then I'm going to drizzle an arc golden syrup to the other end where there'll be a glace cherry.

Could you rustle up a Eaton un mess too?

Very late to the party and not read the full thread but it reminds me of that episode of The Royle Family where Denise cooks a 3 course meal.

Starter: Cuppa Soup (the twist - it's in a bowl)
She goes round asking if anyone wants seconds before topping them up for the kettle

She also did an exotic fruit punch. Blue WKD with a sad banana bobbing in it.

YANBU. Wankery abounds.

Aw, should say, Starter "Cuppa Soup with A Twist". That was on her menu 😂

yes they do both use oil. How does that make them the exact same?

The food is fried yes?.

I can’t fancy anything which involves “foam”, in my mind it equates to “spit”.

Quite. Similarly, ‘soil’ looks and sounds just like shit crumbs to me. 😄

@Drummingisfun watching that episode now!

It’s fair enough to say it’s wanky but I work some evenings in a wanky 5 red star hotel and people don’t half fucking pay for wanky food. We’re booked out nightly and people pay through the nose. They love it and there’s clearly demand for it, I personally like it too but I guess that’s probably just from being around it!

Also, veloute is soooooo different to soup.
Also, salsa is soooooo different to ketchup (that’s a really odd comparison actually)
Also, puréed peas is sooooo different to mushy peas, it’s not even the same type of pea!

Yes. It is fried.... fried being the umbrella term. Is it deep fried, pan fried, sautéed?

Just like eggs, cooked in water yes? Are they boiled? Poached?

I don't know what kind of places yee eat in if you think ketchup is the same as salsa 😂😂 run

And if a menu said only 'fried vegetables' how the hell would I know if that's sautéed onions and peppers or battered deep fried vegetables also known as tempura?

It makes me laugh because I think restaurants charge £1 per word on their menu:
Beer battered cod and tripled fried chipped Maris Piper potatoes served with pea purée. - £14
Battered cod, chips and mushy peas - £6
Rich orchard apples in crumble with creme anglais - £8
Apple crumble and custard - £4

Yes. It is fried.... fried being the umbrella term. Is it deep fried, pan fried, sautéed?

You just don't get it, do you?.

Haven't rtft yet, but I think they feel it justifies them charging 4x as much as they would if they just called it something normal plain!

Eg, Apple pie £1.50.

OR

Lush orchard ripened English apples baked with cinnamon and a smattering of cloves and lovingly enveloped in buttery puff pastry. £6.95

You just don't get it, do you?

Honestly, I think it’s you who’s not getting it.

It pisses me off no end reading a fucking paragraph for each thing on the menu, it makes me feel like I’ve forgot the first half of what the dish is before I finish the paragraph

When did 'pan fried' become a thing? Fried food was either deep fried or shallow fried, presumably in a pan.

As for sautéed, fine if that's what they have actually cooked, don't tell me it's sautéed if it's deep fried potato.

I agree with the 'foam' obsession, I've been binge watching great British menu - the foam just looks, well literally wanky.

At least James Martin was honest on Saturday Kitchen, put a blob on a plate 'two quid', slide a spoon through it, 'a fiver'.

Last bit of rant, deconstructed stuff - wtf? Some food is just made to go together.

I've seen 'open ravioli', if it's ravioli it should be a) plural and b) cooked with a filling inside.

I used to work at a very pretentious restaurant in the countryside and they had a special book in the kitchen that tells restauranteurs how to translate English into opaque restaurant speak!

sash I agree with you on ravioli having filling on the inside, but ravioli, like panini is plural. I don't know if it is upthread or elsewhere that I have recently read about someone being served a raviolo, ie one singular piece of filled pasta, probably garnished by a smear of sauce, for a tragically large amount.

Foam always looks like spit

I'm guessing the people on here protesting about the correct culinary terms being used on menus don't cook from scratch much themselves.

Or they would appreciate the need for clear descriptions.

Puts me right off. I just can't be bothered with the prevention.

Pretention!

grumios But a lot of this isn't about clear descriptions.

Taking the example 'Strips of maple cured crispy bacon, fresh crisp iceberg lettuce, slices of juicy ripe beef tomato with thick lashings of free range egg mayo on toasted granary bread', which I know is a piss take, but it's not that far off the mark, only 'maple cured bacon, iceberg lettuce, beef tomato and mayonnaise on toasted granary bread' is actually about the food and the rest is just poncy window dressing in accordance with current fashion.

It takes too long when reading a menu when deciding what to have to pick out the necessary words about what you are actually going to get.

It's taken as read that any half decent catering establishment will use fresh, decent quality ingredients so I don't need to know that the lettuce will be fresh and crispy or the tomatoes will be ripe and juicy and sliced up, rather than whole.

And they can put a sentence about the provence of ingredients, local, free range etc at the bottom near the allergy statement and tipping/service charge policy. They don't need to add it to every food item on the menu.

A question for the chefs on this thread, especially if any work in independent places, rather than chains - is it the chefs, or the management who come up with the menu 'style'? I suspect it is the latter who decide whether it is to be a 'Bacon. Lettuce. Tomato. Bread. 10' or a 'Strips of maple cured crispy bacon, fresh crisp iceberg lettuce, slices of juicy ripe beef tomato with thick lashings of free range egg mayo on toasted granary bread £9.95' type place?

This thread has made me chuckle. I agree, there's an awful lot of "wankery" in some restaurants.

I went to a posh restaurant for lunch for a birthday celebration. I can't deny that the food was very nice indeed, but I do agree that all the describing of the dishes in detail when they arrived at the table (there were 4 of us and we had different things, so it took a while!) was a bit unnecessary and I couldn't help thinking it was all part of an effort to justify the price! Our lunch cost just short of £250 for the 4 of us - and I was the only one who drank anything alcoholic, that being a small glass of wine!

And it's always locally 'sourced' everything 'sourced' ....from the home fed, organic field reared 'practically a pet til' we killed it' pig source of your ready to masticate to perfection sausage

To the

Locally sourced and based Artisan work of Art bread with 24 different kinds of organic tomato's infused and 12 perfectly placed pumpkin seeds wrapped in aged pure Muslin

Bootiful