jenviolin

Aah Carpaccio indeed!
Last month in Versailles (during the heat wave) we went to a very nice seafood restaurant for a birthday dinner. Kids with us and behaving splendidly. There were lots of unknown fish words on the menu and after a while we stopped looking them up and asking the waitress, and just trusted that everything would be good. So, for the first course, what sounded great? Carpaccio de Betterave! We imagined paper-thin fish slices, perhaps delicately marinated, with a Japanese influence...and what arrived?
Beets!

grandmere

First trip to France when I was in college, I ordered "du the", in what I thought was my best French. The waiter looked a bit confused, but did bring me "deux thes." (2 teas)

china_cat

It was in a nice restaurant in Cortona, for an appetizer we ordered "fonduta di crostini neri". Honestly, I know neri means black, and I thought this was a cheese fondue with grilled bread. I didn't know neri applied to the fondue! The waiter brought it over, a large, steaming hot pot of boiling....liver and spleen puree! I tell you what...this didn't look like something to be eaten..it looked like something that had ALREADY been eaten, digested, and well...you get the picture. My husband and I not only couldn't eat this, we couldn't look at it. I sheepishly told the waiter I had made a mistake, and asked him to take it away. He was actually very apologetic, and very kind (it wasn't his fault at all!) He did not charge us for it, and insisted on bringing us some nice bruschetta as an appetizer instead.

Mariarosa

Goes to show you that what one man considers gross another man loves. Two of my favorite dishes in the world are octopus and smelts (also called "boquerones" or what DeborahAnn refered to as those little fish that you eat whole). Yum!

DeborahAnn

Mariarosa, good point, I grew up in Minnesota where catching and eating smelt was very popular (I however never indulged) but the smelt were big enough to cut the heads off I think. What I ate and what you must enjoy I saw later in the market labeled "fritures" We also had a mishap with some seafood soup where instructions should have come with the soup!!! I love trying different foods, some are just easier to swallow than others. Deborah Ann

sardog10

Last month on our trip to Normandy, we stopped at one of the highway rest stops for dinner. I ordered the beef patty and fries. I noticed when they put it on the grill it had been partially cooked and that they were just finishing off the cooking. When we sat down my husband asked why I had put so much ketchup on my plate. What ketchup I asked; it was all blood from the meat and it had flooded the bottom of the plate! It was totally raw inside! I learned to ask for "well done" really fast on that trip.

Mariarosa

DeborahAnn - Yeah, when the smelts are really small you can eat them whole. I sure would not enjoy eating the head if they were big! ;-)

ellenem

china cat: Your story sounds like something out of a horror movie, I think because of the liquid aspect. Ick!

FainaAgain

Now after reading all this I understand why in some San Francisco restaurants the waiters make sure we know what's coming

Poppa

For us it has to be the salad we ordered in Cuzco.

We had tucked in nicely until I finally traced down a final word in my dictionary.

Good as it was I couldn't finish my "uterus salad."

ellenem

The new profile section makes it so easy to find old threads one started. I just reread this one from six (yikes) years ago, and I think some of you out there may have more to add to this topic. Who's next?

sf7307

I am! We were on the Wine Road south of Strasbourg. I was nearly six months pregnant and starving. My husband is one of those "next exit" types. Well, we finally got to the town of "Arnold" where there was something called "Bierstube Arnold". I didn't care, it was food. So I ordered choucroute (thank God) and what I thought was going to be a "mussel salad", but which turned out to be "muzzle salad", as in beef cheeks (which weren't known then, let alone popular)! Thankfully, it was covered in aspic, which so grossed me out that I didn't eat it anyway LOL!

mjknycmjk

In Hong Kong, I was visiting the island that doesn't have any cars on it (it's been 10 years, I can't remember the name). I was with my brother. I thought I would play it safe at the beachside restaurant we were eating at, and I ordered sesame chicken. When my meal came, they brought out a whole chicken (with the head still on). It was staring at me. It was plucked of it's feathers, but still had the skin on. And over that were some sesame seeds and some kind of sauce. I love chicken, but I just couldn't focus on eating it when it was staring me in the eyes at the time.

Elizabeth_S

We carry detailed menu translator books (pocket sized) to avoid a problem we invented called the "lamb lung" problem - it's our shorthand for food that we would like to know what's in it (don't actually mind most organ meat, just not sure about lungs)

When we lived in Rome I often forgot the book and once ordered what I thought was Tortellini - the handwriting was very hard to read on the menu. It arrived - wasn't pasta and wasn't to my taste so my husband switched with me. When I got back to the apartment I searched through the menu translator looking for what it might have been - yup - lamb lungs.

EastBayer

mjknycmjk, I had a similar situation many years ago while driving through the French countryside. I ordered poussin, which was not a word I had learned in high school French class; from the description I thought I was going to be enjoying tender chicken. Well, it was a whole baby chick, head, feet, and all, on its side in a sort of fetal position. My husband offered to trade, but his fish was too lifelike for my taste, so he altered the looks of my poussin, I ate some of it, and felt sick for the next 2 days.

My husband, while we were living in Switzerland, went with a friend to an Italian workers' restaurant. He didn't understand what the daily special was, but after his friend ordered it he ordered it too. They each got an entire sheep's head. I am so glad I wasn't with them.

sf7307

I am getting nauseous

gruezi

At work a week ago the Tageshit (which we English speakers in the office pronounce just like it looks) was Pferdesteak - Horse steak. The best part was the notation on the menu that proudly said it was imported from the USA. All I could think was GLUE FACTORY!

gruezi

ellenem

gruezi,

In Verona horse is a favorite, with more than one choice on some menus. I almost ordered something described as "horse ribs" but kept imagining Fred Flintstone's car tipping over from the weight.

kerouac

Having lived in Europe as long as I have, it is even funnier to read the reactions when most of the dishes people have described here make my mouth water!

Aduchamp1

Once at Cal Pep in Barcelona, I ordered razor clams and got Chilean sea bass. So much for my Spanish.

On our first trip to Spain, just after the death Queen Isabel, we had a few problems. My wife liked candies whose name was similiar to gracias and sounded like she was asking for a 1/4 of kilo of thank you. The word for ice cream in Spanish is helado and the word for side is lado. When we would ask the waiter what type of ice cream they had, it always sounded as if we were asking what types of sides he had.