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Restaurant menus prone to hyperbole

LIVING MATTERS
Barbara Gunn

When I check out a menu at a restaurant, I like the wording to be simple.

I do not like to be told the house salad contains a rainbow of baby spring veggies kissed by a savoury sesame-miso vinaigrette. I’d just like to hear that the greens come with celery, tomatoes, carrots, cukes and dried cranberries. Don’t care about the kissing.

These days, unfortunately, the typical restaurant menu seems to have been composed by someone who studied creative writing, but wasn’t good enough to write a book.

More often than not, we’re told the vegetables contained in the aforementioned salad are fresh. Lovely. But isn’t fresh a given? Or are the offerings not described that way a few weeks past their best-before?

Every other menu item tends to be described as classic. Or famous. Or a signature something or other.

Famous? I’d say Celine Dion is famous. Or George Clooney. Or Sidney Crosby. Not so some shrimp sandwich with cocktail sauce, lettuce and a side of waffle fries.

These days, the hand thing is played up big, for reasons that leave me baffled. We’re being offered hand-held burgers and hand-carved steak. Hand-cut fries and hand-scooped shakes.

Now maybe I’m missing something here, but haven’t kitchen staffs always scooped the ice cream for their shakes with their hands? And honestly, how am I to eat my burger if not with my hands? With chopsticks, maybe? Knitting needles?

In any case, I’m not really sure why the hand thing’s a selling point. I mean, do hand-cut fries taste superior to spuds that have been cut by the latest slicer and dicer from Starfrit? Kinda doubt it.

Then there are the adjectives, mindlessly tossed in by the creative writing flunky.

Not long ago, for instance, one menu told me its turkey wraps included authentic chipotle mayo. Now I’m not sure what the difference is between authentic chipotle mayo and regular chipotle mayo, but I’m assuming the latter is a knockoff, and is likely to be missing some of the key ingredients. Like chipotles, say.

As I say, when I open a menu, I want to see the items described in pretty simple terms. Don’t tell me about the Angus beef-certified ribeye that’s been aged for 48 days and served with rosemary au jus, freshly harvested, locally grown, organic fingerling potatoes and baby spring asparagus spears bathed in a delicate citron reduction.

All I really need to know is that steak and spuds are on offer.

Have the latter been peeled by hand or machine? Doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.