Noticed this thread in my list and enjoyed rereading some of these hilarious reports.

Anyone have a new story to add?

Well, it's definitely not a gross story, but I thought it was funny.
I was at a busy, family-style restaurant in Panama City. I don't speak Spanish, and the menu read "pavo con su salsa". I knew pavo was turkey, & con was with, and I thought I knew what salsa was.
I got a plate of roast turkey and gravy, same as momma makes. In Spanish, salsa just means sauce/ au jus apparently! So much for native cookery!

When we ordered Andouillette in Paris and the English translation was "chitterling sausage", we didn't know what it was. Adventurous eaters that we are, we figured how bad can it be? Well, it's comprised of the lower bowels of a pig, crammed into a condom-like casing. When the waiter approached our table carrying our dish, the smell arrived before he did. It tasted as repulsive as it looked & smelled. The couple next to us eating beef tartare (a plate of raw chopped meat) looked at our dish with disgust. We definitely had a huge laugh over this but I will never forget that day.

http://tiny.cc/3zmap

I ordered a peperoni pizza in Germany once - peperoni is a bell pepper, not pepperoni like I was thinking. Ick. Ok - so it wasn't as horrible as some of your stories, but I really don't like bell peppers.

Once my uncle ordered a piece of pizza in Germany and it had cucumbers hidden inside it. He has a total phobia of cucumbers, so it was quite taumatic for him. Plus, he had a very limited budget and had just spent his aloted lunch money for the day, so he had to eat it. Ewwww.

Ok - new rule - no more pizza in Germany for our family.

We visited Poland in 1993 and no what we ordered it looked the same. There was some piece of pork obscured by some gluttonous white mass. So we would order the cheapest thing on the menu and hope for the best.
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In Spain my wife would ask the waiter what type of ice cream they had. The problem was the word for ice cream and triangle are similar and it always sounded like she was asking what type of triangles they served.

She also liked a candy that sounded like garcias and she would would ask for a quarter of kilo of thank you. The waiter or the person in the candy store would look at me and I was too mean and amused to correct her and see where this conversation went.

This one was pretty low stakes, but the first time I ordered prawn cocktail in a UK restaurant was a bit of a surprise. It's tiny shrimp covered in mayonnaise/ketchup ('Marie Rose sauce'). I was expecting a traditional shrimp cocktail a la Yank. Live and learn.

For Europeans in the US.. martini from the bottle.. best to say a "sweet vermouth on the rocks". ( Maybe someone already answered this, if so, ignore)

In Tokyo, just last month..I speak Japanese pretty well, so had been doing literally ALL the talking/ordering/enquiring on behalf of myself and my boyfriend, who is preternaturally shy at the best of times but virtually paralysed in Japan, where you're constantly afeared of doing whatever you're doing 'wrong' (anyone who has been there knows what I mean.)

Tired of being the brains of the operation, one night in a sushi restaurant I suggested he ordered his own beer for a %$&*@! change. After much quarrelling (me: just say "Asahi, kudasai! They'll know what you mean, it's the most famous brand of beer!!"), he finally splutters it out to a passing waiter.."Asahi..yes, yes, BIG Asahi..kudasai!" and is grinning all proudly to himself for ten minutes or so until it occurs to us both that it's taking a little long for a beer to be poured, big or not. After enquiring a couple of times (me), and being told that it's "still coming", a waiter finally appears with a MASSIVE tureen of..clam soup, which in Japanese is "asari". Cue much embarrassment and humiliation trying to return it and explain that one! Le sigh.

In a jet lagged state after landing , we ordered a two course lunch in Switzerland. When it arrived we learned that we had ordered a soup appaetizer and soup for a main course.
And in China we ordered a shrimp entree to share for four people and one shrimp arrived by itself on a plate.

The worst food misunderstanding we had in Japan resulted in us getting a bunch of extra beers - hahaha, no problems there ;)

I was with a bunch of colleagues in a small town near the manufacturing plant we were visiting. We had eaten dinner at a local restaurant and when it was time to go, our manager said he could settle the bill and meet us outside. So we all went outside to wait. Apparently when our manager said "bill", the waiter heard "beer", and when he motioned toward where we all had been sitting, the waiter thought he was ordering a round of beer for everyone.

Our manager came out of the restuaurant in a panic to tell us that somehow he ordered a bunch of beer and we had to all come back inside and drink it. We all cheered and hurried back inside. Yay, beer. Who knows what the people in the restaurant thought.

That was a funny trip all around, mostly because of our manager who was escorting 15 of us through Japan. He'd never been there before and he was convinced that something would go wrong. We had a fairly complicated itinerary and he was afraid that someone would get left behind never to be heard from again - so he assigned us all numbers and would "take roll" at every stop, arriving and departing. Boarding area for a flight - take roll. On the plane - take roll. On the train platform - take roll...

At one point we took some cabs and the cab I was in took a short cut that the other cabs did not. We knew that our manager was having a fit. We arrived at our destination before anyone else and just waited. When the other cabs arrived, our manager's cab had barely even stopped before he jumped out and rushed over to us - what happened, where did you go, I thought you were lost! Waaahhh!

He was also terrified that we would inadvertently offend someone. He had a Japanese ettiquette book and read to us out of the book on the plane, on the train, at meals, while waiting for the train... It was hilarious.

There was an American couple whose itinerary matched ours for a little while - same flight SFO to Osaka and then same connecting flight. At one point the woman asked us what the deal was with our mother-hen. When I told her we were just starting a 2 week trip, she said she would pray for our sanity - LOL.

It's tiny shrimp covered in mayonnaise/ketchup ('Marie Rose sauce').

It depends where you order it...many places will be way better than than!

"We laughed the whole time we were eating - never had the fries on the sandwich before"

Guess you've never been to Pittsburgh, Pa then!

And here I thought I had it bad, when in a restaurant near Beaune, I emphasized (so I thought) that I wanted NO egg on my pizza, only to receive TWO baked eggs on top of my pizza.

Thanks wilwill - Just bought the one for Germany in anticipation of a trip this summer.