No English menu, please
I don’t consider myself a neurotic traveller, despite being a neurotic person. I don’t overplan, I’m not dead set on certain activities or attractions: in fact, I’m quite chill. But where my neuroses come out is in my pathological need to be the waiter’s favourite foreign table. The prize? Being handed the native language menu.
There’s an element of tourist shame here. I know that travel contributes on some level to gentrification, housing crises, rising costs, et cetera, and that many aren’t happy to hear American accents in their neighborhoods. In some ways, the local menu is an attempt to assure my hosts – and perhaps also myself – that I have good intentions within a problematic industry, that I do not expect that my language is always the lingua franca.
But there’s also a practical aspect.
Culinary language learning is its own form of phonics. When we learn about a new dish in another language, we learn it as more than the sum of its parts – imbued with meaning via flavour, not merely translation from English. The Vietnamese dish gỏi gà is a tangle of shredded cabbage and paper thin onions, crunchy pickled carrots and daikon, and poached chicken, topped with peanuts, fried shallots, and loads of herbs, finished with a sweet, sour fish sauce dressing. This carries an entirely different meaning than the ‘chicken salad’ that I grew up with as a mayo-based sandwich filling in the United States, where regionality and personal preference anoint an otherwise-plain deli staple. My parents, from the Chesapeake Bay, make theirs with Old Bay seasoning.
When a dish is translated crudely into English, often ingredient-for-ingredient, one pauses to reflect on the skillfulness of true literary translation in conveying meaning. To see a carbonara written as ‘spaghetti with bacon and eggs’ elicits a wince. While perhaps literally true, it’s an almost offensive reduction of meaning. To say nothing of the emulsion.
It would be facile to look at a chermoula, a salsa verde, a chimichurri, and a zhoug and say that these are all green sauces. Learning their unique names roots these similar (but not identical) condiments in place, forcing one to consider patterns of colonisation and migration. Apicius, the fifth century Roman cookbook which serves as one of the earliest recorded recipe collections, contains a recipe for a green sauce for fowl. If one views the Italian salsa verde as its most direct descendant, one can also see the vestiges of Roman conquest and Berber migrations in the chermoula, which leans into tempered spices and preserved lemons. The vinegared chimichurri carries the mark of colonisation; as green sauce became ubiquitous in Mediterranean Europe, so too did it travel with imperial exploration. Perhaps nothing drives this home more than a trip to Mexico, where a taco, a flauta, a tlayuda, and a tostada could all be translated into crude English the same way. When one learns each dish through flavour and technique, nuances and regionality, the interplay between native and Spanish words are more obvious. But this linguistic approach has its limitations. Our thirst for a global pantry leads us on this broad exploratory path, but how deep is it?
It’s an interesting point of reflection for the gourmand. In how many languages can I identify a dozen ingredients, full dish names, and even modifiers that indicate spice level and cooking methods, yet I cannot say hello or ask how someone is doing? Flavour is an interesting basis for linguistic exploration, but not an all-encompassing one. Just because it allows us to trace foodstuffs as they relate to migration and colonisation doesn’t mean it forces us to reckon with these things.
Take my knowledge of Spanish and Italian, for example. I speak pretty good Spanish – more Latin American than Iberian – because I grew up in cities with large Spanish-speaking populations and because I studied Latin American political history during my undergraduate degree. In Mexican or Salvadoran restaurants in particular, my culinary knowledge and my grasp of the full language are well-matched.
However, on a recent trip to Spain, I was struck by the reverse. I could converse with the waiter and field his questions, but culinarily I was out of my depth. I knew very little of the vocabulary, especially where there were Basque influences, and I accepted the English menu with a huge blow to my ego. It was funny, I thought, having my first real opportunity in several years to riff with the waiter in another language and yet not know any of the dishes.
Another point of reflection for the gourmand: why did flailing about with unfamiliar dishes make me feel like more of a tourist than, say, not being able to count to ten? Food is often the lens through which I view the world, and because food is imbued with history and reflects so much about people and place, it’s a good lens to use. But it’s not the only lens, and the gourmet traveller must be wary of the ways that food smoothes complexities into something not just palatable, but delicious.
Three years ago, I was on a Roman holiday in the last sputtering embers of a dying relationship. The terrace was full, and we’d been shepherded into the unfashionable ante-room, one of the most beautiful rooms in which I’d ever been. Warm wood panelling was offset by rich greens and blues, the colours of Matisse’s La Danse, softly lit by twisted brass sconces. There was only one other party, two elderly New Yorkers taking their surly, easily-embarrassed granddaughter on a trip for her middle school graduation. I, who had been to Rome twice before, had executed my dance with the waiter perfectly. I really struggle with Italian, always grasping at Spanish words and getting flustered. I can order and nothing more, but this evening I had used enough of the right words to let the waiter know I could be trusted with an Italian menu. As the waiter gave the other party their (English) dessert menu, the patriarch’s eyes went wide. ‘Should I be worried,’ he bellowed to the staff, with a Rodney Dangerfield laugh. My boyfriend and I pinched each other, barely done with our antipasto of carciofi alla Giudia, artichokes fried until their crispy petals splayed like a sun-scorched plant gone to seed. We needed to be in on that joke. The granddaughter hung her head, mortified. Some primi, secondi, and a few contorni later, our waiter brought the (Italian) dessert menu. ‘Can we have the English one as well?’ I asked, flitting my eyelashes towards my boyfriend with blame, feeling a hint of disappointment nonetheless. He brought it swiftly, and there it was at the bottom.
Fried grandpa balls.