The power of the written word

Over these last few years, as I have learned to compose menus and menu descriptions, I have come to notice an all-too-often let down when it come to eating out: what it says on the menu vs. what I actually get. Now I'm not talking about the waitress...oh, sorry....server bringing the wrong thing, I'm talking about the sexy way that an item description can roll off of your tounge vs. what is actually put in front of you. For example, my buddy Joe runs a catering company and last week I helped him out with hors dourves (yes, I had to look up how to spell "hors dourves". And it seems as though no one in the english speaking world knows where the damn apostrophie goes, so I left it out entirly). In true Joe fashion, all the food was top notch. One little thing bothered me, though. The Percorino crostini with quince mostarda. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Oh, don't get me wrong, it certainly was, but the taste isn't what bothered me. It was the fact as I was assembling these tasty little treats, I realized what they really were: a tiny slice of toast with a tiny smear of jam ("mostarda" is italian for chutney or jam and contains zero mustard like the waitress in Montreal tried to convince me of) and then a chunk of pecorino. Now, before I go any further, let me just say that I in no way look down on Joe or think he did anything wrong in any way. In fact, Joe is one of the few people I have had the pleasure of working with in both restaurants and in catering who really cares about making great food. Every chef should be like Joe.

I found it interesting that what my mind read, "Percorino crostini with quince mostarda" sounded interesting and exotic...and what my eyes saw was toast with cheese and jelly. It got me thinking about the difeerence between something "looking" good and something "sounding" good. It's interesting to think that if you were presented with a written menu and told to choose something and then were presented with a table full of all of the dishes from that menu that you might (and probably would) pick something else, trusting your eyes more than your mind.

A clever menu description can make anything sound like more than it is. But I guess at the end of the day, a restaurant is a business trying to sell a product. If one company was selling "Pecorino crostini with quince mostarda" and the other was selling "toast with jelly and cheese", it would be a no-brainer.