My husband and I on a tres romantic break to Paris years ago were eating a meal at La Gare. An old train station converted into a posh restaurant near to where we were staying.
We couldn't really decipher the menu. I went to catering college years previously and all the dishes we cooked had French names - I still didn't recognise anything on the menu 
My husband speaks reasonable holiday French - nope, still stuck.
We were to embarrassed to ask about the food and just didn't have the confidence or the vocabulary to ask a waiter.
So we ordered beefsteak Nebraska thinking it would be straightforward.
Well it seemed the raw steak had been cooked by leaving it out in a warm kitchen for a couple of hours then put on a plate. The potato had been mashed and processed until it was just about sauce consistency. This is pommes puree I believe.
We did our best to eat our food, feeling like twits, paid the bill and left.
Love Paris and always will but this was one of our less successful forays into French cuisine. Other meals at other establishments were delicious as expected.
(I couldn't justify the expense of a Christian Lacroix necklace either that was then £45 in a department store. Totally unrelated to food but still.)
Another time in Portugal my husband ordered lunch for us using the latin word for meat. When he went to pay the bill and to demonstrate that we had eaten beef casserole he put his fingers to his head as if they were horns - I think he even made the sounds too. He made himself understood but I said don't do that again they might call the police !