IN MY HUMBLE OPINION:MANY OF the vulgar affectations of Irish economic success – SUVs, 58-inch flatscreen TVs, books by David McWilliams – now look anachronistic, as normal service is resumed. Chief among these is the language used on restaurant menus.
Some time in the past decade or so, Irish restaurateurs got together to ensure that our menus include as many obscure French culinary terms as possible, to intimidate diners and make them pay over the odds.
Over the years I have come to learn that a jusis a gravy in disguise and that a coulisis a sauce just back from a week on the Côte D'Azur. I know now that compotedescribes the mushy fate that befell rhubarb when your mother stewed it and served it for dessert.
This is the beginner's end of the lexicon, however. Perhaps I am an unusually negligent diner, but I tend not to carry a gigantic French-English dictionary about my person. Riffling through the "P" pages to determine what papilloteand pied de cochonmean fairly spoils the experience of eating out.
I recently came across the pièce de résistance, to use a menuesque phrase: a dish of "guinea fowl, parma [sic] ham and chorizo farce". "Farce", you say? Will there be hilarious romantic misunderstandings between the guinea fowl, who is secretly in love with the chorizo, to whom the Parma ham is reluctantly engaged? Is it served on a stately home in the English countryside? I looked up "farce", by the way. It means stuffing.
I could ask what terms like this mean but, being both Irish and male, I am culturally and genetically incapable of admitting there is anything I do not know. And menu-related queries aren't encouraged in this type of eatery. "Hi, I'm just out from the cave for the night. Could you tell me exactly how artichokes veloutéare different from your common-or-garden variety?"
After which your waiter, Snooty McSnootalot, confides in a colleague, "The troglodyte at table eight didn't know what veloutémeant! Can you believe it? A hoh, hoh, hoh." (That's laughing in French).
French can also serve to distract from the essentially repulsive or repulsive-sounding nature of the victual on offer. Foie grasis a neat little conceit, disguising the fact that a dish composed largely of an internal organ responsible for detoxifying a force-fed goose's blood is being served. A "green sauce" sounds like it might just be comprised of mucus. A sauce verde, en revanche(whoops, did it encore!), sounds delectable.
Restaurateurs of Ireland, a timbaleby any other name would taste as sweet. Or savoury. Because it's just a pie. Right, I'm off for some pommes de terre avec McNuggets à la mode.