Mistakes on Menu's
 

Yes, the mistake in the thread title is deliberate :)

Okay, I'm a pedant. I don't look for mistakes in signs and menus, they just jump out at me. But last night I read a take-away menu that had been put through my door and it just about trumped every one I've seen before.

Forget pinaepple, burgr or Barcardi - when I reached the chicken section I realised this was a classic.

Tenacy Chicken (think about it)
and Louissianna Chicken

Bless them.

My favourite from last year, was a beautifully decorated chalk board outside a bar, with the words "Christmas bookings now bean taken" lovingly chalked on in a calligraphic style.

Thank god. You made my morning, SG. Greengrocers apostrophe’s are a serious irritant.
I've also seen "Spicy Beef Tender" at a local Chinese restaurant. It was spicy beef tendon. Just a little different. :eek:

http://cellar.org/2002/objectsdart.jpg

It's such a common error that it's accepted, but I can't stand this particular language mix.

One of our favorites we saw three years ago:

Errors on a Chinese Menu don't really count, unless the error is in the Chinese version.

I am the same way SG. My ex and I would be driving along and I'd go "did you see that sign? _____ was misspelled." He was always amazed at how things jump out at me.

In staff meeting today I ran to get my reading glasses, came back to my seat, glanced down at the 4 paragraph paper in front of me, and realized my coworkers used "it's" as possessive. It was in the middle of all those other words but it's like it glared at me.

Another case in point. Anyone have a BP station nearby? Look at the sign listing for the "Ultimate" gas. the i and the m are together. I can't illustrate it here but just think of it as the dotted i is the first leg of the m. Who notices? No one. Well, me. I've never figured out why, but I wonder if I point it out to them I win some kind of contest or something. :)

Chinese restaurant errors may not count, but they are fun. A place I used to frequent had "General Chicken" instead of "General's Chicken" (short for General Tso's Chicken). I used to ask them if they had any Specific Chicken. They didn't get it.

The same place also had the "b" in crab rangoon replaced with a "p". Not terribly appetizing, that.

My favorite has always been a hand made sign on a lot in Norristown selling Christmas trees that annonced, "Fur Trees for sale".

"annonced" hehehehe

It just makes me batty. I can't even post about it. If I do I'll just start freaking out.

I still remember a restaurant in Brazil that offered "Chicken Gordan Blue." I always imagined being served a steaming plate of blue poultry when I read that on their menu.

Or a waiter named gordon with a blue face...

All the local churches around here are notorious for it... some are hilarious.

About 2 years ago the Houston Chronicle ran a recipe in their cooking section with a recipe that called for "4 boneless children's breasts." My wife wondered aloud if it was sent in by Jeffrey Dahmer (the serial killer and cannibel). ;)

I was recently interpreting over dinner for a mixed party of Russian and English speakers. Unfortunately, the hotel hadn't thought to ask me to translate the menu into Russian, they'd simply put it through a web-based translator ... some of it came out OK, some didn't. I give below retranslations into English of the worst bits:
"Parmesan custard Caesar style: With bread croutons he crisps the parmesan and roasts the garlic dressing;
Bosom of guinea fowl: Cumin puree smelling of a Swedish national, he buttered the Savoy cabbage and the potato paste lump;
Make the tuile biscuits crisp: Layered with pistachio mousse, milk chocolate ice cream and with mixed jam of a berry;
Recent coffee foundation with fine feuers" :eyebrow: .

I know a chip shop where they sells Chip's, Pie's, Chicken Nugget's etc.

Your kidding. :p

It's not his kidding; it's their kidding. :D & :mad: at once.

My favorite restaurant menu-mutterer is still the like of "served with au jus." The French Dip sandwich entry invariably draws my eye to check.

I agree, and most places do it anyway. :eek:

mmmm...... wonders just how many Russian parties visit Arran...

(and in Douglas Adams mode..... where in the world can I fnd a Russian Interpreter..... why, where else but a small island within the west coast of Scotland...)

With me it runs about half and half. Denny's (U.S. restaurant chain) gets it right... maybe International House of Pancakes does too, can't recall.

Handprinted sign in Chinese takeaway -

"Flied Lice Special"

Ugh.

What were they thinking?? Let's see, we pronounce the "r" as an "l" which means we have to write it that way? Or perhaps they have mostly chinese customers who will understand it.

Or they know full well that every well-meaning, bending over backwards not to appear racist customer that they have says it that way, but not when they order.

I think it's very funny.

Flied lice, velly nice.

take a drive thru this part of western georgia.. but whatever you do if you have a nit picky linguistic bone... do not i repeat DO NOT actually stop and talk to anyone..

I dunno... "When the skull is thick, use discussion by percussion..."

Why even bother?

Isn't that a non-profit in Seattle?

Hardee's hand scooped ice cream. Perhaps other places use feet?
Help me out. Can anyone think of another way to scoop?

An excavator?

That would be a lot of ice cream...

It's amazing how many errors and nonsensical statements appear in newspapers (including electronic ones). I just saw this in an article about the growth of the Canadian wind industry:

I wanted to put this in the Dwellar's IRL thread, or whatever it was called.
That's the problem - I can't remember what it's called!

So tis here instead.
Because it would make Jebus cry.

:D

One of my current clients has "Outside Basement Entry's" on his website -- a website that *I* wrote the copy for, mostly. I did not put the text on the tabs, therefore this is not my error, but it is humiliating. I'm fighting to get it changed but the website guys are awfully stubborn. :(

Couple of years ago, I nearly drove off the road after seeing the following gigantic signs in every window of a huge furniture store:


Then there was the brochure I received which advertised a secretarial seminar dedicated to writing better, more professional letters. Not only did it have scare quotes around things that had no reason for quotation marks at all, it also had all the punctuation outside the quotation marks. ARGH.

I wrote them a very polite letter informing them that because they clearly did not know what the fork they were talking about, I would not be attending their seminar. Future secretarial seminar brochures were corrected.

HA!

My mother insists she's never going to write anything to me again, because of my serious mental illness about spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. *





* Any errors in this post are directly attributable to the hijinx of intarwebz pixies.

As opposed to opposition from people who are in favor of the project, but object to details like density, location, or something?

Not a mistake, but I found it amusing. From a restaurant in Ocean City, MD.

There was no such limit on any other drink. Perhaps they thought the Long Island Iced Tea made for particularly troublesome customers.

I've seen a limit on Zombies, also.

No no no. Take out tequila (years ago when I learned to make them no one used tequila) and replace trip sec with Cointreau. Oh, and COCA COLA. And lemon, not lime.

Oh, sorry, didn't mean to critique the drink. Old bartenders never die...

Why no tequila??

I personally don't have a problem substituting cointreau <-> triplesec. Close enough for my purposes.

Cheers Happy Monkey :)

Re cocktail wars - I'm fighting a losing battle re real Black Russians.
Even more so now I'm not drinking (ie I can't vote with my wallet).

VODKA AND KAHLUA, people. Get your coke in the toilets if you need it.

I am by no means an expert on anything remotely related to alcohol... but I thought Vodka and Kahlua was a White Russian, thus the substitution of Coke making it a Black Russian...?

The traditional recipe never called for tequila. I think it just makes it taste bad and gives more alcohol punch, which for some is the whole point of the drink. I used to like the taste of them, when a visiting college friend and I went to the bar I would eventually work at and she suggested I try one.

http://coffeetea.about.com/od/icedte...longisland.htm

A White Russian is Vodka, Kahlua, and cream. A Black Russian omits the cream.

Coke? I never heard of that in a Black Russian.

No Coke in either Russian. White Russian is a Black Russian with cream added.

So I've heard. ;)

Ah well, I don't know who says Coke then. I've never had either drink, myself. I was basing my guess on SG's assertion that someone must have thought Coke belonged in a Black Russian.

Hey, I'm just a slow typist who is easily distracted. By the time I wrote and posted mine, you'd already posted, with references even.

Victory has a limit (2) on one of their beers... either St. Boisterous or Olde Horizontal, I can't remember...

FYI: a White Russian with a splash of Coke is called a Colorado Bulldog.

Most bars here think that Coke belongs in a Black Russian. I think because it makes for a longer drink and therefore takes longer to drink, meaning a few rounds are less likely to end in puke or violence?

I've even seen Tia Maria, vodka and Coke described as a Black Russian. Sigh. :headshake

I remember taking my Mum and sister (blimey - so we did used to get on just a little bit!) to Freud's in Oxford back in the early '90s. Gorgeous place - old chapel. I bought us cocktails, and ordered a B52 for myself. The waitress said, very kindly, "This is a short cocktail you know." It was okay, I knew, but sweet of her to worry that I was envy the other two's long, fizzy, umbrella decorated drinks.

Oh, and I almost forgot the Scotch Aggravation, i.e. a White Russian made with Scotch.

So, we've strayed from grammatical errors to drinks? Hehe...

I think from now on, I will run a grammar and spelling check on all my posts before submitting. :p Just kidding, I am too lazy for that. :D Y'all seem like a polite bunch. Y'all would sit there and be annoyed but won't poke me out, I hope. :nuts:

that's what it was in the bar at Birmingham Uni. And other pubs up north. Kahuwhat? :lol:

Thanks for the back-up. I was beginning to look a bit over-semsitive.

Merkins are reeeeaaally into their cocktails. or maybe it's just a crashing towards middle-age thing. Hard to tell which is culture and which is age when you switch continents at 30, but all of a sudden whenever i go out for drinks, all the other women are drinking cocktails and parties in people's houses are all about the host's mixed drinks -margeritas, dirty martinis, bloody marys..... never has it been so hard to get a gaddamned beer! :lol: *sigh*

As we get older, we have less time to drink (not to mention less bladder capacity) so hitting the hard liquor becomes imperative.

long, muddled post with no real point:
 

I've always wondered whether our taste in alcohol changes with age due to something physiological. There are, of course, lifestyle-based reasons as well. I have personally taken to drinking straight, hard liquor over ice, if given the preference--something I wouldn't have enjoyed even five years ago. And it would have made much more sense for me to drink that way while playing long, long sets behind a drumset.

Edit: Oh, and the other obvious thing. I can afford more expensive alcohols now, which actually taste good straight. I'm not drinking the same stuff anymore; and when I do, it still requires being mixed with something. Crown Royal Cask #16 versus the regular Crown (needs Coke!) for instance.