London - Could I tempt you with a dish of tchufas before your mishmishiya? A sprinkling of za’atar on your burekas? Perhaps some cima di rapa on the side?
Have you tried ordering from a restaurant menu lately?
At one recent dinner, I was left baffled by a menu offering, among other more recognisable foods, kickshaws, ogleshield, squab and puntarella. A week later, I was hesitating between pig’s head kromeski, horn of plenty, feijoada and rattes.
I used to think it irritating when waiters asked whether you had any questions about the menu. Now, I fall on them, desperate to be told what I might reasonably hope to eat.
What, I ask, tentatively, are burekas and how do they differ from the neighbouring bouikos? What can I expect from the tardivo and do I need crampons for the Monte Enebro? Could the chef let me know if the nduja is suitable for vegetarians?
What follows is a masterclass in guttural hawking; a rolling of Rs and a summoning of European vowels. In return to your enquiry about the Booj-ee-kos, they reply: “The Boh-hichhhkos? Why, they are Sephardic buns made with kashkaval and nigellas.”
“Ah,” you say, “I see.” And not knowing what kashkaval or nigellas are, either, you ask if you might have a little hummus and a basket of pitta bread.
Sometimes, even the front-of-house team don’t know what the chef has put on the menu. An apologetic waitress had to confess at one dinner that she had no idea what “sea beet” was, but thought it was probably related to sea bass. It’s actually an ancestor of beetroot.
Whereas once I might have made a cup of peppermint tea after a meal out, now I open my laptop and Google all the things on the menu I was too embarrassed to ask about.
Ogleshield, it turns out, is a cheese made with the milk of Jersey cows. A squab is a young domestic pigeon. Puntarella is a chicory-like salad leaf.
Kickshaws, meanwhile, are bitesize savoury treats, first made popular in the 17th century. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part II, an order is placed for “a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws”. At Quo Vadis, the London restaurant in question, they are deep-fried pastry parcels filled with chicken. I might have ordered one, if I’d known.
Some foods though, or at least the spelling of them, are the invention of the restaurant. After fruitlessly searching for “tchufas”, I found that the “chufa” or earth almond is an edible tuber or plant structure with a nutty flavour. Dastardly trick, putting a silent letter at the start.
I used to operate on the principal that anything unknown on a menu probably fell into one of three categories: cheese, cured meat or pasta shape. Increasingly, though, the old meat/cheese/pasta formula is of no use. I find myself out-foxed by restaurants serving obscure grasses and seaweeds.
Couldn’t cima di rapa be listed under the more Anglo-Saxon term, turnip tops? Or can’t menu creators include a crib sheet: tardivo - a type of radicchio; agretti - an edible coastal shrub?
I recently came a cropper at a restaurant in the fearsomely fashionable district of Dalston, east London, when I ordered “chicken of the forest” expecting a free-range fowl.
Chicken of the forest, also known as crab of the woods, is a type of mushroom. So, too, is horn of plenty, though that took rather a lot of Googling.
I find that Middle-Eastern restaurants are most fiendish. I blame Yotam Ottolenghi, the celebrity chef who has filled every middle-class foodie’s kitchen cupboards with za’atar and harissa.
Restaurants now assume that we are all familiar with chermoula and bouikos, burekas and moutabel and so on.
Except that whenever I do confidently order burekas, feeling certain it is that rather nice, mildly-spicy aubergine dip, I discover it is a deep-fried cheese pastry and not what I wanted at all.
Still, I can forgive a Middle-Eastern or Italian restaurant for giving its offerings their proper names. What is more disagreeable is the globe-trotting menu that throws in Polish kromeskis (chopped up meat) with Portuguese feijoada (a stew with beef and pork) and Cornish rattes (potatoes).
For a time, I thought I was simply ignorant. Then I was at a lunch with Mark Forsyth, author of The Etymologicon, and so a man who knows about obscure words. But he, too, couldn’t recognise three of the offerings on the menu: ajoblanco, quadretti and imam bayildi.
The first, the maitre d’ rapturously explained, was a Spanish garlic and almond soup. The second, a pasta shaped like little squares. And the third, an eye-watering spice mix translates literally - and rather wonderfully - as “the imam fainted”.
While I do like to expand my vocabulary, sometimes I would just like cod and chips, rather than a cryptic crossword puzzle.
It has become the latest restaurant affectation. After minuscule portions, after open-plan kitchens and show-off cheffery, after boasting about ingredients that are organic, local, seasonal or biodynamic, and after ‘dirty’ burgers, steaks and other street foods, restaurateurs dazzle us with the ingenuity of their menus.
You might say it is my fault for going to such restaurants. You might think it’s a self-regarding London thing. But the affectation is spreading.
I’ve seen mojama (salt-cured tuna) at a Bristol restaurant, involtini (aubergine slice in a tomato sauce) in Oxford and gribiche (a mayonnaise-type egg sauce) in a Warwickshire pub.
Mark my words, it’ll have spread to every gastro-pub menu in the country faster than you can say mishmishiya.
Daily Mail