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                    You Think We've Got Problems?
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                      submitted by Janet Armil

I had been quite absorbed with fantasizing about a weekend I will be
spending on my own in Italy, complete with imaginary, but very
serious, discussions with servers and chefs about eating
gluten-free....Then I came across this, and the irony just sent my
funny bone to tickling.  It comes from "The Bride of Anguished
English" by Richard Lederer.  It is due out this fall.

[The following is reprinted with the permission of the author, Richard
Lederer.--editor]

Unappetizing Menus
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On a Chinese menu you can read, "Mr. Zheng and his fellow workers
like to meet you and entertain you with their hostility and unique
cooking techniques."

A Warsaw restaurant advertises with the exultation, "As for the tripe
served here, you will be singing its praises to your grandchildren on
your deathbed."

A menu in a Swiss restaurant boasts, "Our wines leave you nothing to
hope for."

If you travel a lot, you know that some of the most memorable
experiences can occur in restaurants and that some of the most
memorable "English" appears on foreign menus.  Eating in a foreign
restaurant can be a genuine adventure spiced by culinary and
linguistic entertainment.

A Shanghai Mongolian hot-pot buffet guarantees, "You will be able to
eat all you wish until you are fed up!"

An Indian restaurant advertises, "Our establishment serves tea in a
bag like mother."

A Tel Aviv hotel advertises its room service:  "If you wish for
breakfast, lift our telephone, and the waitress will arrive.  This
will be enough to bring your food up."

A Sicilian menu assures, "Guests are advised that all fruits served
here have been washed in water passed by the management."

Another Italian menu requests that you "...please pay the house waiter
the price of your consummation."

A hotel notice in Ankara, Turkey, announces, "You are invited to visit
our restaurant where you can eat the Middle East Foods in a European
ambulance."

A restaurant in Indonesia's Jakarta Hilton beckons customers with this
come-on:  "Grill and roast your clients!"

On a "family style" restaurant in Hong Kong appears the sign "Come
broil yourself at your own table."

A Tokyo restaurant requests that you "please do not bring outside
food, excluding children under 5."

And a Japanese steak house boasts its house specialty:  "Teppan
yaki--before your cooked right eyes."

One restaurant in Rome listed on its menu "Mixed boils to pick."  The
Italian phrase is simply "mixed boiled meats of your choosing," and it
is a tasty dish of simmered beef, veal, chicken, tongue and sausages.
However, something got lost in translation.  Italian eggplant is
melanzane.  Some conscientious translator searched English
dictionaries and found that mela means "apple" in English and zane
means "nutty or crazy."  So eggplant in Italy is often listed as "mad
apples."