kerouac - not sure of your riz/ris thing. I was always sure that r-i-z was rice...r-i-s I don't remember coming across except having to do with laughter
Neo - great tip on the steak tartare - wasn't aware of that and will now search it out (one of my favorites too along with sweetbreads)

Pick up a copy of MenuMaster-French. This is pocket sized and handy. You can read about what you might be ordering. It spared us Kangaroo in one establishment.

How can a dictionary help you figure out that 'kangarou' is 'kangaroo'? What else could you possibly have thought that it was?

What do you mean, robjame, you aren't sure of the "ris" thing? that's the word in French for that item (sweetbreads in English, an odd term), ris de veau, and what you'll see on a menu. I don't know the origin of that term.

I have seen riz de veau on menus and in recipes. Took a cooking course where the chef went to great pains explaining the origin of the term riz de veau. I am questionning myself whether the words are both used.

NeoPatrick...I thought cheval was horsemeat...at least that's what my french translation book says. Good to know as some things truely do get lost in translation.

Yes, that was my point of the post. I thought so too, but sometimes the word cheval is used for a raw egg on top of something and is a sort of slang for "on horseback", which is why the word cheval is used. I used to be amazed how many brasseries had horsemeat on the menu, and then found out that wasn't it at all.

After using the Marling Menumaster for years, I recently bought "Eating and Drinking in Paris: French Menu Reader and Restaurant Guide." The big advantage is that everything is listed alphabetically, so you don't have to worry about whether an item is a fish, or a meat, or whatever.

In addition to memorizing the main types of food, and those that you definitely want to avoid (and it doesn't have to be sweetbreads - my husband hates squash, so he knows the word for that), it's helpful to memorize some methods of preparation, like grilled, boiled, fried, sauteed.

Bottom line, though, to save time, once you know what the main ingredient is, and how it's prepared, just be willing to chance it - it won't really affect your enjoyment of something if it's served with pureed cauliflower vs. creamed zucchini.

And some things will never be in those translation guides. At a restaurant in France last week, one of the dessert choices was carpaccio de ananas. So I knew it was something to do with pineapples - but why would a dessert have carpaccio? I looked everywhere for a translation, but found no dessert carpaccio. Turns out, the pineapple was sliced very, very thinly, like carpaccio...