<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> You Think We've Got Problems? ----------------------------- 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 ------------------ 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."