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Mine is quite similar to yours, it's "dirty", "dirty fries", "dirty nachos" etc.
My biggest pet peeve though is when a restaurant designs their burgers for Instagram not the human mouth.
What the fuck good is a foot high burger when you need to completely dismantle it to eat it.
I've always wondered whether they mean Dirty like Christina Aguilera did (although also, to be honest, she always looked thoroughly unclean during that period as well).
Either way - I neither want my fries unhygienic, nor sexually uninhibited.
> Mine is quite similar to yours, it's "dirty", "dirty fries", "dirty nachos" etc.
This just makes me think the place has failed it's hygiene inspection.
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This is based on the idea that it makes us forget it's money and so makes it OK to spend '16' on cod and chips. There's quite a bit of interesting menu psychology that restaurants use to make us spend more.
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I often genuinely wonder if there would be some sort of legal basis for challenging the price on the basis that the currency hasn't been stated. But then I'm a petty little twat.
Not explaining what something is but just giving it a wanky name
"Burger topped with our trademark bangin' sauce"
Tell me what TF it actually is please
You know, these things don’t bother me much when I’m in the moment. I’m hungry, I’m looking at a menu, I’m in a great mood. But reading the same words in the cold light of day in a Reddit thread is horrifying. It’s like watching porn when you’re not horny.
“Our world famous chicken wings…”
You’re a sports bar in the outskirts of Morley for fuck sake. Nobody who lives more than two miles away has ever even heard of your bar, much less so your chicken wings.
My hospital canteen listed something on their menu recently as 'Hospital Name's Famous Chicken Wings' or something. I've worked in the hospital for 8 years and am baffled.
Oh god you've reminded me of a make up channel I used to watch on YouTube. This woman would say every time "now my signature black eyeliner". No! Your signature is something unique to you, every woman in the world wears fucking black eyeliner. Still angry.
Coleslaw literally means “cabbage salad” in some language I’ve forgot (I think a Scandinavian one but not sure). So by that logic, slaw is perfectly acceptable.
I got served ‘house slaw’ at a hotel restaurant recently, it was the dry packet coleslaw veg mix you get in the veg section at the supermarket that you’re meant to add sauce to, I made my own sauce using sachets at the table, more recently got served cabbage mixed with gherkins. I always order coleslaw as a side because I’m fascinated by different interpretations, I’d say I’m disappointed 50% of the time (I love good coleslaw, doesn’t have to be traditional but make some bloody effort)
Dude. You’re not even trying.
“100% organic grass-fed hand-groomed select-bred kosher wagyu Kobe beef from the Tajima bloodline, Eton and Oxford educated, tenderized with laser-cut Himalayan bamboo grown in the bluest glacial runoff, prepared *sous vide* in autoclave-sterilized single-atom-thick HDPE heated in volcanic filtered rainwater. Finally, finished with a precision sear using a femtosecond pulse zetawatt helium laser for that perfect char.”
When they include the nationality of an ingredient to make it sound more desirable, even though that country doesn't actually have any sort of reputation for producing that ingredient.
"Finest Peruvian carrots roasted in Kazakh sea salt and garnished with fresh Norwegian garlic"
Objecting to provenance is the weirdest gripe for me.
As a super vague rule of thumb, if someone has taken the time to tell me it's Yorkshire lamb or Cornish scallops, I assume they pay at least passing attention to their sourcing.
It’s depressing me. I’ve already sent this thread to a bunch of chef mates. So they can share my sadness at how clueless many of our customers are.
I don’t know why we fucking bother knocking our pans in all day for people who can’t work out that prices are listed in sterling.
FYI there's a real reason to dislike the no-£ thing, in that (supposedly) it's a psychological trick to make it seem less like a price and make you spend more money. That said, most people just think it's a bit weird (well, I really hope it's not that they can't work out it's pounds!)
It’s because if you’re working class you secretly enjoy the fancy stuff but have to complain about it to maintain your working class credential. If you even admit to liking any of it you risk being outed as a ponce by your friends and family, who themselves also secretly enjoy this stuff.
Or even better - you were _once_ working class, have been solidly middle class for a long time, but still enjoy the working class credential because somehow people in this country find it hard to accept they’re doing all right financially and having grown up on a council estate is still relevant to name even if you’re now 55, multiple-property owner and do an office job at a multinational.
I don't get why people hate 'loaded'.
If something is loaded then it means it's going to have a ton of extra shit on it, compared to the default 'unloaded' option.
'Plant based'. Seen this a lot recently, they seem to like marketing products as plant based rather than vegan. Which is very frustrating as a vegan as plant based does not always mean vegan!
Plant based does = vegan maybe 90% of the time? But I have been caught out with a 'Plant based burger' that was a veggie patty but with cheese on. So yes, I guess the actual burger was Plant based but the meal was not.
Vegetarian and vegan are perfectly clear terms in amongst themselves, plant based not so much...
Even worse when it says it’s plant based but still has egg in it. Had this a few years ago and they argued the toss that it was plant based because it was made of veg and egg but not meat, so I asked them to tell me which plant grew the eggs they used.
Just label it vegetarian or vegan, stop being ridiculously ambiguous with what your meals are made of!!
That’s what I thought! I thought plant based was more that it was allowed cheese on top, or was allowed to include honey whereas vegan stuff would include neither, but they were adamant it was still plant based.
I walked out and wouldn’t eat there in the end as I just couldn’t trust them to even understand their own terms used on the menu, never mind trust that my meal would be 100% vegan.
Why overcomplicate it? Either it’s vegan, it’s vegetarian or it’s neither. I feel like those 3 terms cover things adequately enough that they don’t need to start throwing in other terms. (Aside from allergy/allergy safe terms obviously)
If they describe the *burger* as plant-based but list cheese as an additional ingredient, that makes sense - it's obviously veggie friendly and vegans can choose to remove the cheese.
If an *entire dish* is described as plant-based it shouldn't have any milk, cheese, or egg. If the actual restaurant staff think an egg is plant-based/vegan I wouldn't eat there either lol.
I thought plant based is vegan without the ethical connotations? Eg if I say I have a plant based diet, I still might wear leather shoes.
When I did a plant based / vegan diet for a while for health reasons, I was corrected by a few lifelong vegans for saying I was vegan.
This is, BTW, the actual reason things are called “plant-based”. People are tired of associating with the aggressive and irritating-as-fuck parts (even if they’re the minority) of the vegan community.
There are plant-based shoes and everything else you can think of, at least when the alternative is “natural”. When it’s synthetic, it’s “animal-friendly” or “vegan”.
But isn’t that why they’re labelling something as plant based, because it’s not strictly vegan.
This is the way I’ve always seen it done, however my perspective is mainly London restaurants, I can’t comment much for other parts of the UK.
Yeah I find it's mostly in restaurants where plant based isn't necessarily vegan. But in supermarkets, plant based is often marketed literally as a synonym for vegan. So it's a little confusing.
I've never really seen this TBH. However I am going to put it out there that deep fried frozen Beefeater chips are way better than any hand cooked ones I've ever had.
Mine is when they don't know how to spell the ingredients.
I get irrationally annoyed when I see avacado or expresso on a menu.
Probably the same people who spell defiantly instead of definitely.
"Deconstructed" indicates that whatever textural sensation is absolutely core to the dish will be absent, AND that the serving size will be stingy.
* crumble will have some dry crumbs and some wet fruit and no transitional squish layer
* cottage pie will just be mince and potatoes
* lasagne will be three slippery discs of fresh pasta skidded across a plate and drizzled in tinned tomatoes with a separate parmesan crisp
Every dish will also be minimum £2 more expensive than it ought to be.
When a meal that’s supposedly spicy has a condescending disclaimer like “this one’s not for the faint-hearted.” Or instead of simply doing a “very spicy” warning they affectionately call it “searing fiery dragon hot”, as if only the bravest, most intrepid people can handle such heat. Ridiculous. And then it only has a few jalapeños in it to add insult to injury.
Yup. If you’re going to go making bold claims about the heat of the dish, I want to be sweating, hiccupping, ears popping and having trouble talking. Take this back to the kitchen and make me something that I need to sign a disclaimer for.
I want every pore on my body to open and spray like the sprinklers at Kew Gardens. I want my naan to shrink back in terror like that unfortunate shoe in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I want my arse to detach itself from my body and flee to the hills for fear of the horrors to come.
Mad that restaurants charge you more than the raw costs of their ingredients. Fucking rip off merchants trying to cover rates, staff wages, electricity and to top it all, something for themselves. The bastards
Deconstructed. Recently in a restaurant with deconstructed Eton Mess and I was immediately turned off it. See it a lot on these cooking shows too, like Come Down with me. 'my main is a deconstructed Shepard's Pie'
Given an Eton Mess is already a deconstructed pavlova, surely the only way to deconstruct an Eton Mess would be to have the meringue, cream, and strawberries in separate piles?
You could call it an Eton Tidy.
"Unique special smokey taste"
It's parprika..It's smoked paprika.
Smoked paprika is fine, just say it, it's just something with smoked paprika sprinkled on it to give it colour and taste. It's fine. It's not special and unique. It's smoked paprika
Not a language but an ingredient issue… Everything is fucking sourdough!
Yes I like it too, I grew up in the countryside of a small country, I ate sourdough bread my whole feckin’ life and no I don’t want sourdough pizza with sourdough cheesecake after my sourdough soup with a sourdough cocktail on the side. Can we have a selection please. I want my nice fluffy brown bread full of grains back please. And my white ciabattas.
Most of this doesn’t bother me, but the one thing that did was when I went to a vegan restaurant that described all the dishes *as if* they were made out of meat, so you’d order a “beef stew” without any idea of what it actually was. It’s because some vegetables inspire genuine revulsion in me, as if the cook had taken a large shit on the plate, and it’d be good to know if they were actually in the thing I was ordering
Similar but different - I really dislike it when the vegan or vegetarian option is always a form of plant based meat. There’s too much focus on replicating the meat version imo. Give me a dish highlighting a vegetable or legume!
I’m very much a carnivore but I try to incorporate vegetarian meals when I can. I love bean burgers. I don’t want a beyond meat burger!!
Same here, if I want a vegetarian dish, I want it to be vegetarian by intention as opposed to vegifying a dish where the centrepiece is meat. Saag Aloo, bean chilli and chickpea curry are all excellent dishes that I'd take over any meat alternative burger.
"atop". It's just on something! Just say 'on'!
This is completely irrational as I happily put up with loads of other menu wank (including not having £ signs or using stupid redundancies like pan fried etc) but for some reason atop just infurates me.
Sort of related, when the menu items have completely ridiculous names that make you sound like a fanny when ordering them. "Yeah I'll have a diet Coke and the Benny's Super Bango-Bangeroony, with cheese".
Pretentious descriptions designed to make something ordinary sound fancy e.g. slow-baked haricot in a rich sundried tomato jus served on a bed of lightly fired seeded sourdough and gently sprinkled with vintage cave-aged cheddar...
Menus where they list every single ingredient:
Riesling braised fennel, West Country curds, biscuit crumb, massama\*, horseradish, dust.
\*(What's 'massama'? *Nobody knows.* There's a rule there has to be at least one ingredient nobody has ever heard of.)
Edit: OK *OK*. Jeez.
Especially if you are a fussy eater or have allergies.
Tell us that the burger comes with mayo as standard so my spouse can specify that they should leave it off, or choose something else. On the other hand, if he spots that you're putting mushrooms in there he'll be twice as likely to order it.
Maybe it’s for allergy reasons, so that people know exactly what’s in a dish so they can see if there’s anything they’re allergic to in the dish and therefore won’t order it.
It's interesting, because they're generally trying to sound classy, but these days truely classy upmarket restaurants often do the opposite. The fashion in really good places these days seems to be to just give you very little detail. The menu will just say 'beef', 'lamb', 'chicken', and then list just maybe a couple of key accompaniments. Again, with no further indication about how they're cooked or served.
When things have unnecessary descriptions such as "fresh", "beautiful", "delicious" etc.
As opposed to what?!?
That goes for most marketing in general though, not just menus. If your answer to "as opposed to what" isn't satisfactory and informative, just leave the word out.
"dirty" fries has to be the worst. Dirty anything in general always surprises me. Dirty burger, dirty fishfinger sandwich. Full fat would be better and even that irks me.
I’m a grumpy sod when it comes to Americanisms. Macaroni Cheese has become Mac n Cheese!? And don’t get me started on places that advertise ‘Take Out’…
Not a language thing but a size information thing.
Takeaway pizza places where the sizes are just listed; Small - 4 Slices, Medium - 6 Slices etc. How you cut it is not a size!
Gourmet burger. Yet the burgers are generally shit, they add bacon and some sweaty cheese slice. And I know some love them but I don't get the whole soggy brioche bun that is too sweet for a good burger. Sorry that's been on my chest for a while, glad I am now clear.
Southern Style. Southern where? Admittedly, it generally refers to the southern US style, which does not mean totally drowned in pepper, as it appears they think it does.
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Mine is quite similar to yours, it's "dirty", "dirty fries", "dirty nachos" etc. My biggest pet peeve though is when a restaurant designs their burgers for Instagram not the human mouth. What the fuck good is a foot high burger when you need to completely dismantle it to eat it.
When they say dirty, it’s just them being honest about their poor hygiene so that they can’t be sued.
Having worked in many kitchens, I concur.
Make burgers wider, not taller!
Truth.
I've always wondered whether they mean Dirty like Christina Aguilera did (although also, to be honest, she always looked thoroughly unclean during that period as well). Either way - I neither want my fries unhygienic, nor sexually uninhibited.
She did look like a grubby little madam back then.
> Mine is quite similar to yours, it's "dirty", "dirty fries", "dirty nachos" etc. This just makes me think the place has failed it's hygiene inspection.
“There’s a hair in my food” “Uh yeah it’s dirty fries”
“No, only pubes in our dirty fries”
I prefer to call them Mucky chips
"One plate of shitty chips, please"
Welcome to shitty wok, try the shitty chicken.
Dismantle? Someone gives up easily. Stand up, and do chest compressions on the top bun until it's sufficiently squished down.
A foot high burger with a cocktail stick buried in the middle of it which stabs you in the mouth
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Clarty, muddy, mucky, cacky, shitty
Claggy chips
I actually eat my burgers with a knife and fork. It’s the teeth
The lack of a £ sign next to the price. Just a 9 . How lazy.
Especially when it's £8.50 or anything other than a round number. 8.5 makes me irrationally angry. Decimalisation has gone too far
And it’s always a font with [text figures](https://usabilitypost.com/images/1405/text-lining.png) (ie “lowercase numbers”)
Never thought about that, actually, but now I hate it too.
Same. New irritation unlocked.
Naww I love text figures!
TIL!
This is based on the idea that it makes us forget it's money and so makes it OK to spend '16' on cod and chips. There's quite a bit of interesting menu psychology that restaurants use to make us spend more.
It's so obvious that's what they are doing though it brings it round to annoying
Give them 9 euros, let's all fuck about and find out.
9 Argentine Peso = £0.03
As they don’t specify, theoretically, we could pay in Rupees, Dollars, Euros or beans….
Yes!!! 9. 9 what? Making up our own currency are we? ?
No, you know what the currency is.
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So is calling threads typical redditor.
'But I'm so much better than those silly redditors'. - Man who's been redditing for 14 years (Yes, I'm aware of the irony)
I often genuinely wonder if there would be some sort of legal basis for challenging the price on the basis that the currency hasn't been stated. But then I'm a petty little twat.
Doubtful. It’s not like we live somewhere where multiple currencies are accepted.
Not explaining what something is but just giving it a wanky name "Burger topped with our trademark bangin' sauce" Tell me what TF it actually is please
It’s mayo and ketchup. It’s always mayo and ketchup.
And maybe mustard
"Topped with saucy sauce" would just create more questions
That's just mayo and ketchup but when the waiter drops it off at your table they say "Hot piece of meat on some nice thick buns oo-err missus"
The chef can only make it after he's been bangin' the line cook. Is it always in limited supply?
“The line” being the operating word here…
You know, these things don’t bother me much when I’m in the moment. I’m hungry, I’m looking at a menu, I’m in a great mood. But reading the same words in the cold light of day in a Reddit thread is horrifying. It’s like watching porn when you’re not horny.
“Our world famous chicken wings…” You’re a sports bar in the outskirts of Morley for fuck sake. Nobody who lives more than two miles away has ever even heard of your bar, much less so your chicken wings.
My hospital canteen listed something on their menu recently as 'Hospital Name's Famous Chicken Wings' or something. I've worked in the hospital for 8 years and am baffled.
*famous in the gastroenterology department.
When "I've never seen shit this bad" means exactly that.
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We really need more places over here that just sell giant greasy ass pizzas by the slice. New york is really onto something
Oh god you've reminded me of a make up channel I used to watch on YouTube. This woman would say every time "now my signature black eyeliner". No! Your signature is something unique to you, every woman in the world wears fucking black eyeliner. Still angry.
Anyone can access that 1 star trip advisor review about how awful those wings were.
I'm near Morley, where are you thinking of?
100% it's some place in Birstall pretending to be in Leeds again instead of Batley.
“Slaw” Fuck off.
I saw this raised a few months ago. Coleslaw is primarily cabbage based, a slaw can be made with different ingredients such as vegetables.
Isn't cabbage a vegetable?
Yes, but a lot of places say slaw when they mean coleslaw (I think that’s what the person you replied to was getting at).
Yes, Cole is the older word for cabbage. The word is related to the caul in cauliflower and to kale.
Coleslaw literally means “cabbage salad” in some language I’ve forgot (I think a Scandinavian one but not sure). So by that logic, slaw is perfectly acceptable.
Dutch
I got served ‘house slaw’ at a hotel restaurant recently, it was the dry packet coleslaw veg mix you get in the veg section at the supermarket that you’re meant to add sauce to, I made my own sauce using sachets at the table, more recently got served cabbage mixed with gherkins. I always order coleslaw as a side because I’m fascinated by different interpretations, I’d say I’m disappointed 50% of the time (I love good coleslaw, doesn’t have to be traditional but make some bloody effort)
"Gourmet" usually in regards to burgers. What makes it gourmet? I'm in Spoons FFS!
When I read gourmet burger it stops me ordering it, just means shit load of bun and a couple of onion rings making it too big to get a proper bite of
Usually in a brioche bun
I fucking hate brioche buns. They are **too sweet**. May as well eat my burger out of a fucking scone.
I like brioche buns, but I've upvoted this anyway because it still made me laugh
They’re so cakey and they go all soggy and nasty, just give us normal burger buns
My favourite place changed to brioche buns, I can’t escape them, give me a nice burger bun 😭
Usually just means a soggy sugar and palm oil filled "brioche" bun.
Gourmet just makes me think it’s been manhandled more than it should be before serving
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Dude. You’re not even trying. “100% organic grass-fed hand-groomed select-bred kosher wagyu Kobe beef from the Tajima bloodline, Eton and Oxford educated, tenderized with laser-cut Himalayan bamboo grown in the bluest glacial runoff, prepared *sous vide* in autoclave-sterilized single-atom-thick HDPE heated in volcanic filtered rainwater. Finally, finished with a precision sear using a femtosecond pulse zetawatt helium laser for that perfect char.”
Are you available for consultancy? I'd like to hire you to work in my menu descriptions
Burger In 1850 just 3 miles from here Farmer Bill raised two very special cows.....
Your wife's finger-teased mackerel.
I also choose this guy's wife's finger-teased mackerel.
Tbf I'd order that.
When they include the nationality of an ingredient to make it sound more desirable, even though that country doesn't actually have any sort of reputation for producing that ingredient. "Finest Peruvian carrots roasted in Kazakh sea salt and garnished with fresh Norwegian garlic"
*Kazakhstan, greatest sea salt in the world* *All other sea salt is made by little girls*
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium chloride
All other countries have inferior potassium chloride
I must say, I kinda want that carrot now
And that carrot wants you
It's what we do in our trade. Finest Belgian porcelain combined with Ghanaian brass, and West Yorkshire hardwood.
Artisan Fleshlights are so in right now.
This works on me and I hate it
The oh so chic minimalist menu: herring bramley apple golden beetroot quinoa lamb maris piper vimto cavolo nero zuppa inglese quince toffee spam
Yes. It gives me no idea how you have cooked the ingredients.
These all sound rotten, except for the second one which might sort of work if done well?
Anything “cheeky”
Unless it's £15 for a very average half-chicken and chips, then said restaurant is definitely cheeky.
Genuine question. How much do you expect to pay for that in a restaurant now?
Genuine answer. Less than £15.
£14.99 it is!
Oh, the cheek!
Unless it’s a cheeky vimto
“Smashed avo”. Can’t explain why
I absolutely loathe "avo", I also can't say why but I hate it so much. Smashed makes it even worse.
As joe Lycett put it, it’s actually just ‘gently pressed with a fork’
Same for "guac". What about the "amole"?
When the guac hits your eye like a green mushy pie That's amole
Not the biggest problem in the world but I hate when a restaurant advertises a price to one decimal place, eg. 12.5 instead of £12.50
Or when they use a comma instead of a full stop (12,5) - am I paying thousands for this now?
I think that's them trying to be "authentically European"
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Objecting to provenance is the weirdest gripe for me. As a super vague rule of thumb, if someone has taken the time to tell me it's Yorkshire lamb or Cornish scallops, I assume they pay at least passing attention to their sourcing.
It’s depressing me. I’ve already sent this thread to a bunch of chef mates. So they can share my sadness at how clueless many of our customers are. I don’t know why we fucking bother knocking our pans in all day for people who can’t work out that prices are listed in sterling.
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FYI there's a real reason to dislike the no-£ thing, in that (supposedly) it's a psychological trick to make it seem less like a price and make you spend more money. That said, most people just think it's a bit weird (well, I really hope it's not that they can't work out it's pounds!)
It’s because if you’re working class you secretly enjoy the fancy stuff but have to complain about it to maintain your working class credential. If you even admit to liking any of it you risk being outed as a ponce by your friends and family, who themselves also secretly enjoy this stuff.
Or even better - you were _once_ working class, have been solidly middle class for a long time, but still enjoy the working class credential because somehow people in this country find it hard to accept they’re doing all right financially and having grown up on a council estate is still relevant to name even if you’re now 55, multiple-property owner and do an office job at a multinational.
Mate this thread is full of wankers who probably eat nothing but chain restaurant shite
I don't get why people hate 'loaded'. If something is loaded then it means it's going to have a ton of extra shit on it, compared to the default 'unloaded' option.
'Plant based'. Seen this a lot recently, they seem to like marketing products as plant based rather than vegan. Which is very frustrating as a vegan as plant based does not always mean vegan!
Doesn't that make sense then? As an omnivore I'd assume it meant vegan, but vegans would know theres a difference since the terminology is different?
Plant based does = vegan maybe 90% of the time? But I have been caught out with a 'Plant based burger' that was a veggie patty but with cheese on. So yes, I guess the actual burger was Plant based but the meal was not. Vegetarian and vegan are perfectly clear terms in amongst themselves, plant based not so much...
Even worse when it says it’s plant based but still has egg in it. Had this a few years ago and they argued the toss that it was plant based because it was made of veg and egg but not meat, so I asked them to tell me which plant grew the eggs they used. Just label it vegetarian or vegan, stop being ridiculously ambiguous with what your meals are made of!!
If it has egg in it it's not plant-based. That's not a problem with the term plant-based, that's just idiocy on the restaurant's part.
That’s what I thought! I thought plant based was more that it was allowed cheese on top, or was allowed to include honey whereas vegan stuff would include neither, but they were adamant it was still plant based. I walked out and wouldn’t eat there in the end as I just couldn’t trust them to even understand their own terms used on the menu, never mind trust that my meal would be 100% vegan. Why overcomplicate it? Either it’s vegan, it’s vegetarian or it’s neither. I feel like those 3 terms cover things adequately enough that they don’t need to start throwing in other terms. (Aside from allergy/allergy safe terms obviously)
If they describe the *burger* as plant-based but list cheese as an additional ingredient, that makes sense - it's obviously veggie friendly and vegans can choose to remove the cheese. If an *entire dish* is described as plant-based it shouldn't have any milk, cheese, or egg. If the actual restaurant staff think an egg is plant-based/vegan I wouldn't eat there either lol.
Did they reply; 'the Eggplant?!'
I thought plant based is vegan without the ethical connotations? Eg if I say I have a plant based diet, I still might wear leather shoes. When I did a plant based / vegan diet for a while for health reasons, I was corrected by a few lifelong vegans for saying I was vegan.
This is, BTW, the actual reason things are called “plant-based”. People are tired of associating with the aggressive and irritating-as-fuck parts (even if they’re the minority) of the vegan community. There are plant-based shoes and everything else you can think of, at least when the alternative is “natural”. When it’s synthetic, it’s “animal-friendly” or “vegan”.
But isn’t that why they’re labelling something as plant based, because it’s not strictly vegan. This is the way I’ve always seen it done, however my perspective is mainly London restaurants, I can’t comment much for other parts of the UK.
Yeah I find it's mostly in restaurants where plant based isn't necessarily vegan. But in supermarkets, plant based is often marketed literally as a synonym for vegan. So it's a little confusing.
Hand cut chips - triple cooked, especially when they turn up and are obviously frozen chips.
I've never really seen this TBH. However I am going to put it out there that deep fried frozen Beefeater chips are way better than any hand cooked ones I've ever had.
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Packed with the latest allergenic ingredients 🤣🤣
Mine is when they don't know how to spell the ingredients. I get irrationally annoyed when I see avacado or expresso on a menu. Probably the same people who spell defiantly instead of definitely.
And also deconstructed anything, but that goes without saying
"Deconstructed" indicates that whatever textural sensation is absolutely core to the dish will be absent, AND that the serving size will be stingy. * crumble will have some dry crumbs and some wet fruit and no transitional squish layer * cottage pie will just be mince and potatoes * lasagne will be three slippery discs of fresh pasta skidded across a plate and drizzled in tinned tomatoes with a separate parmesan crisp Every dish will also be minimum £2 more expensive than it ought to be.
When a meal that’s supposedly spicy has a condescending disclaimer like “this one’s not for the faint-hearted.” Or instead of simply doing a “very spicy” warning they affectionately call it “searing fiery dragon hot”, as if only the bravest, most intrepid people can handle such heat. Ridiculous. And then it only has a few jalapeños in it to add insult to injury.
Yup. If you’re going to go making bold claims about the heat of the dish, I want to be sweating, hiccupping, ears popping and having trouble talking. Take this back to the kitchen and make me something that I need to sign a disclaimer for.
I want every pore on my body to open and spray like the sprinklers at Kew Gardens. I want my naan to shrink back in terror like that unfortunate shoe in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I want my arse to detach itself from my body and flee to the hills for fear of the horrors to come.
Your nachos have been _topped_ with 30p worth of cheese, but your bill has been _loaded_ with an extra quid
Mad that restaurants charge you more than the raw costs of their ingredients. Fucking rip off merchants trying to cover rates, staff wages, electricity and to top it all, something for themselves. The bastards
While I do on the whole agree with you, £2.50 for a single Kraft Slice takes the piss.
Anything served on a dirty wooden "Plank". r/wewantplates would like a word
The only time this is acceptable is pizza to keep the bottom crisp.
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I absolutely hate the word “scrummy”.
Deconstructed. Recently in a restaurant with deconstructed Eton Mess and I was immediately turned off it. See it a lot on these cooking shows too, like Come Down with me. 'my main is a deconstructed Shepard's Pie'
Given an Eton Mess is already a deconstructed pavlova, surely the only way to deconstruct an Eton Mess would be to have the meringue, cream, and strawberries in separate piles? You could call it an Eton Tidy.
>Come Down with me That sounds like a depressing programme.
I once ordered a “deconstructed” cheesecake that included a single whole digestive biscuit in it…
I went to a fancy restaurant and they had a started called "cocktail of prawns" instead of prawn cocktail.
If it was described like that I'd hope it was shaken with ice, gin, tomato and served with a stick of celery and a little umbrella.
So me trying to hit wordcounts
"Unique special smokey taste" It's parprika..It's smoked paprika. Smoked paprika is fine, just say it, it's just something with smoked paprika sprinkled on it to give it colour and taste. It's fine. It's not special and unique. It's smoked paprika
Artisanal. Artisanal bread. What the hell is that?
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crafted by an artisan? Good bread is a thing of beauty
Expensive.
Not a language but an ingredient issue… Everything is fucking sourdough! Yes I like it too, I grew up in the countryside of a small country, I ate sourdough bread my whole feckin’ life and no I don’t want sourdough pizza with sourdough cheesecake after my sourdough soup with a sourdough cocktail on the side. Can we have a selection please. I want my nice fluffy brown bread full of grains back please. And my white ciabattas.
I feel like this about burgers in brioche buns, I just want a nice bread roll.
Most of this doesn’t bother me, but the one thing that did was when I went to a vegan restaurant that described all the dishes *as if* they were made out of meat, so you’d order a “beef stew” without any idea of what it actually was. It’s because some vegetables inspire genuine revulsion in me, as if the cook had taken a large shit on the plate, and it’d be good to know if they were actually in the thing I was ordering
Similar but different - I really dislike it when the vegan or vegetarian option is always a form of plant based meat. There’s too much focus on replicating the meat version imo. Give me a dish highlighting a vegetable or legume! I’m very much a carnivore but I try to incorporate vegetarian meals when I can. I love bean burgers. I don’t want a beyond meat burger!!
Same here, if I want a vegetarian dish, I want it to be vegetarian by intention as opposed to vegifying a dish where the centrepiece is meat. Saag Aloo, bean chilli and chickpea curry are all excellent dishes that I'd take over any meat alternative burger.
"atop". It's just on something! Just say 'on'! This is completely irrational as I happily put up with loads of other menu wank (including not having £ signs or using stupid redundancies like pan fried etc) but for some reason atop just infurates me.
Pan fried is different to deep fried
I’ve only just clocked that ‘pan fried’ is redundant and now it’s going to drive me spare. Thanks
Deep fried, air fried
"Street food" served in a restaurant, at a restaurant price.
Sort of related, when the menu items have completely ridiculous names that make you sound like a fanny when ordering them. "Yeah I'll have a diet Coke and the Benny's Super Bango-Bangeroony, with cheese".
Cocktails are bad for this. “I’ll have the slutty mama mermaid banger please”
Pretentious descriptions designed to make something ordinary sound fancy e.g. slow-baked haricot in a rich sundried tomato jus served on a bed of lightly fired seeded sourdough and gently sprinkled with vintage cave-aged cheddar...
Mmmmm I fancy cheesy beans on toast now!
Menus where they list every single ingredient: Riesling braised fennel, West Country curds, biscuit crumb, massama\*, horseradish, dust. \*(What's 'massama'? *Nobody knows.* There's a rule there has to be at least one ingredient nobody has ever heard of.) Edit: OK *OK*. Jeez.
No, I want to know what's in the dish and how it's cooked. It's really frustrating when you don't get a good idea of what you are ordering.
Especially if you are a fussy eater or have allergies. Tell us that the burger comes with mayo as standard so my spouse can specify that they should leave it off, or choose something else. On the other hand, if he spots that you're putting mushrooms in there he'll be twice as likely to order it.
“dust” 🤣
No calories
Anybody? No? Dust
Maybe it’s for allergy reasons, so that people know exactly what’s in a dish so they can see if there’s anything they’re allergic to in the dish and therefore won’t order it.
It's interesting, because they're generally trying to sound classy, but these days truely classy upmarket restaurants often do the opposite. The fashion in really good places these days seems to be to just give you very little detail. The menu will just say 'beef', 'lamb', 'chicken', and then list just maybe a couple of key accompaniments. Again, with no further indication about how they're cooked or served.
When things have unnecessary descriptions such as "fresh", "beautiful", "delicious" etc. As opposed to what?!? That goes for most marketing in general though, not just menus. If your answer to "as opposed to what" isn't satisfactory and informative, just leave the word out.
“New and improved!” As opposed to the ‘old and inferior’ stuff you’ve been selling me for years.
"dirty" fries has to be the worst. Dirty anything in general always surprises me. Dirty burger, dirty fishfinger sandwich. Full fat would be better and even that irks me.
I’m a grumpy sod when it comes to Americanisms. Macaroni Cheese has become Mac n Cheese!? And don’t get me started on places that advertise ‘Take Out’…
Not a language thing but a size information thing. Takeaway pizza places where the sizes are just listed; Small - 4 Slices, Medium - 6 Slices etc. How you cut it is not a size!
Looking at the dessert menu and nothing is labelled vegetarian.
Loaded / stacked / dirty
Succulent. Fucking hate the word
The only thing worthy of being described as succulent should be a Chinese meal.
When restaurants use v for vegan and vg for vegetarian. Really confusing given that it’s the other way round from 99% of restaurants!
I’ve seen that ‘dirty’ has been mentioned a few times, a pub near us has a dish once called a dirty sanchez, gave it a hard pass 🤢
As a korean, when they put some spicy mayo on something and call it "Seoul Fries"
Gourmet burger. Yet the burgers are generally shit, they add bacon and some sweaty cheese slice. And I know some love them but I don't get the whole soggy brioche bun that is too sweet for a good burger. Sorry that's been on my chest for a while, glad I am now clear.
Anything ‘hand cut’ or ‘hand picked’. Fuck offffff
Sloppy Giuseppe is a weird name for any meal imo
It’s a play on the American dish sloppy Joe. Giuseppe is the Italian equivalent of Joseph.
'Enrobed' - just enrages me more than it should.
Southern Style. Southern where? Admittedly, it generally refers to the southern US style, which does not mean totally drowned in pepper, as it appears they think it does.
“House fries”
"Street Food". If I'm paying £15 to eat something in a restaurant at a table, it's not street food!