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.

What the fuck is a micro herb?

Bill Bryson writes about this well.
I’m one place with a pretentious menu he requests a tramparent cylinder of well-drawn aqua, or some such .

Yes, I was asked at one place if I knew how the menu worked: I said yes, I pick something, you bring it, I eat it.

Agree with pp about the ingredients being listed.
It is really so people would know what's in it (though SO BLOODY MANY ignore it anyway) and so you wouldn't have a situation when plate arrives and it has for example tomato, the person can't or won't eat. It does prevent lots of food waste.

Pan fried. If it says fried most will assume it's deep fried and will give you a headache because it's not.

Handcut shows it's proper homemade and not from a giant bag pre cut in some factory or cut by a machine.

If you ever worked in hospitality or retail or any customer facing role, you would know that people are generally a pain in the a*.

Agree with the rest about "poshing" up food with foreign mainly french names. Annoying.

@Madmoggie mini baby herbs 😂That's what I call it

*NewGrandad

@SurlyValentine

A Manchester restaurant serving a Fall menu? That's wanky in itself!*

Not if it’s Chez Mark E Smith ...

I recently went to a nice pub that served vegan fish and chips

Pan fried always amusing me how else would you fry something

^ in a deep fat fryer?

Every time I get served food on a slate I want to say "has this been in the dishwasher" and sing:

I HATE "shopping list menus".
Recently I ate a a restaurant where one of the puds was listed as 'stout, chocolate, milk'. Apparently this dish was om great British menu. I finished up asking the waitress in an exasperated way to please explain what the puddings actually was. I got the impression she I was far from the first...
In case anyone knows which restaurant it is, I ordered a different pud in the end. Whole meal was excellent though, definitely worth a visit once you get past the menu speak and eat the food.

Fried means pan fried. Whatever happened to sautéed ?

I expect chips to be hand cut in a restaurant. It doesn't need to be specified!

@Everyoneiswingingit then you are in for a surprise...
It's time consuming and since people want everything cheap....

I think the steak on a stone fad was the worst. Basically you cook your own food and pay £££ for the pleasure!! Plus it took ages to cook.

Yes what has happened to sautéed food

Drizzle of no longer seems so popular on menu

Purée and mushy peas aren't the same

Blimey if it bothers you so much save your money and eat at home! No doubt if it wasn't the restaurant terminology that's whipped you up into this frenzy it would be something equally as unimportant!!! Jesus get a life!

😝😝

Not in a wanky restaurant though Often , I'm not talking Wetherspoons!

No frenzy here, just agreeing with OP that it's pretentious. It's just food that ends up in the sewer!

I can’t stand the term “topped with”

When we lived in Oz many years ago anything which was prefixed with "gourmet" was awful but I know half the battle in selling your food is the menu writing and following the trends in how they "should" be written - we get used to understanding the signals for quality, we learn to avoid places with laminated menus, places with views, anywhere on the high street or beside a tourist attraction, anywhere too pretentious looking, chains...and overly pretentious language in menus.

I read a restaurant description once, which described bananas as being 'handpeeled'.

How else are you meant to peel bananas???

Lolling so much at this! I've had the jus? You mean gravy? convo so many times with DH.

My personal hatred is lemon posset. Kept appearing on come dine with me. What a disappointment of a pudding that must be.

I like it when ingredients are listed I find it a bit exciting... I know what I'm getting to an extent so I can be sure I'm likely to enjoy it but I don't know how they're going to put it all together.

Jus is thin, gravy thick. Pea purée is mostly fresh or frozen pea, mushy peas are made with marrow fat peas. Those are useful descriptions.
That thing where they just list the ingredients is bloody annoying. I want to know what you've done with them. I like a relatively detailed description so I know what I'm ordering. And if it comes with a side salad tell me so I don't order another one.