In a big city like New York, there are upscale restaurants anywhere you turn. If you have the fortune to end up dining in a high-class eatery, you'll notice that the flowery descriptions of the foods sometimes reach an almost literary quality. Here are a few examples of this phenomenon to help someone deconstruct and better understand the veritable poetry that they are ordering.
Restaurant: Per Se
Item: Salad of Compressed Watermelon, $30.
Description: "English cucumber ribbons, pickled green chilis, banana mint and almond pudding."
Interpretation: Watermelon is involved somehow, and this particular watermelon is pressed in some way, probably by the crushing disapproval of its watermelon parents for only ending up in a measly salad. This watermelon's brother went to medical school, but hey, it's doing just fine too. Includes peeled pieces of cucumbers that were knighted by Queen Elizabeth, green chilis that aren't fresh because let's be honest, this is a salad... We'll break out the good ingredients if you order something that costs real money. Garnished with some sort of weird hairy mint leaves (from what I gleaned by looking at Google Images), and then some mushed-up almonds with sugar or something.
It's not a banana, so I hope at least that it's a mint of some kind.
Item: Charcoal Grilled Miyazaki Wagyu,$125.
Description: "parmesan-battered shallots, Hass avocado, greenmarket lettuces and sauce raifort"
Interpretation: There is an underground food-fighting ring held in the basement. This week, the shallots had their asses handed to them by a particularly ornery block of parmesan, and as punishment it's being used as an appetizer. Avocado is in there to cater to the more #basic crowd because hedge fund managers have daughters too. It's important to specify that the lettuce is greenmarket, because if it's not greenmarket, it might as well have been fished from the trash. According to Wikipedia, raifort is horseradish in French. So the sauce is just like horseradish sauce, except it snubs anyone who buys non-greenmarket lettuce.
Regular horseradish is for uncultured swine.
Item: Twig Farm's Fuzzy Wheel,part of Prix Fixe.
Description: "Royal Blenheim apricot membrillo, young fennel, candied pistachios and saba reduction."
Interpretation: The name was taken from a failed children's book about a spill at a nuclear power plant that causes wheels to grow fur and become sentient. A special fancy apricot is used (it probably tastes just like a regular apricot, but with more pretension). Young fennel is used because our society is ageist and old fennel is too withholding. Saba is also known as "grape must reduction," which sounds really unappetizing. I guess the saba is reduced further so you could also call it "grape must twice reduction."
These Royal Blenheim apricots make all other apricots look like dirty peasants.
Item: Butter Poached Nova Scotia Lobster, part of Prix Fixe.
Description: "hen of the woods mushrooms, black mission figs, purslane and toasted hazelnut vinaigrette."
Interpretation: Similar to "Chicken of the Sea" brand tuna, but with fungi. Black mission figs will probably try to convert you using pamphlets outlining their religious doctrine. Purslane is some sort of weed that I guess the restaurant repurposed as food, and the vinaigrette is pretty self-explanatory.
I wonder if someone thought to copyright naming foods after chicken.
Restaurant: Le Cirque
Item: Octopus Salad, $26.
Description: "Grilled octopus, rainbow potatoes, cherry tomatoes, taggiasca olives, salsa verde."
Interpretation: Actually pretty straightforward for the most part. The only ambiguities are the potatoes and the olives. The rainbow potatoes are made of different-colored potatoes that support gay marriage. My Italian isn't great, but I'm fairly certain "taggiasca" roughly translates to "exorbitantly overpriced."
Tastes good and makes a statement.
Item: Cod, $29.
Description: "Baby fennel, cucumber foam, potatoes, saffron sauce."
Interpretation: Baby fennel is like regular fennel except it didn't even live long enough to reach adulthood (YOU MONSTERS!). I don't know what cucumber foam is, so ask your parents. Saffron sauce is just sauce made from ground-up flowers because apparently this restaurant's chef enjoys destroying all that is good and pure.
They might as well just eat the fennel seeds before they even get to grow. Call me crazy, but I believe life starts when the pollen tube reaches the embryo sac.
Item: Ribeye, $65 per person for 2 people = $130.
Description: "Prime pure-bred Japanese beef. 7x ranch from Colorado for two."
Interpretation: They throw the word pure-bred in there to make it feel like you're eating your dog, but really it probably doesn't mean much unless it participated in a cow pageant before it was slaughtered. Either they put ranch dressing on it (gross) or they're telling you which ranch it came from, I guess.
If you dare to call her a mutt one more time she'll smack you upside the head with her handbag.
Alaska Halibut Crudo, part of six-course $155 Prix Fixe.
Description: "Red pepper coulis, orange foam, yellow pepper, mayo."
Interpretation: This restaurant's fixation with foam is a little disturbing. Red pepper coulis is just sauce made from red peppers and some other stuff. Their use of the vernacular "mayo" as a shortening for mayonnaise is pretty surprising given the environment.
Orange foam (finger).
Restaurant: Narcissa
Item: 24-oz Bone-in Ribeye, $58.
Description: "slow-roasted, with little gem salad, sea-salt potatoes."
Interpretation: Like being regular roasted, but costs more. Side salad also contains a variety of precious gemstones that can be eaten and pass through your digestive system so that you can feel very opulent during your next bowel movement. Not recommended for those with a history of stomach/rectal ulcers.
Just throw in some lettuce and you've got yourself a gem salad.
Item: Carrots Wellington, $24.
Description: "bluefoot mushrooms, sunchokes, gremolata."
Interpretation: Sunchoke is a type of artichoke also known as the Jerusalem artichoke. They chose to use the former in order to keep from alienating any potential Palestinian clientele. Gremolata is just a mixture of herbs, but it sounds like a creature that should live in a cave.
Item: Brussel Sprout Leaves, $15.
Description: "shaved baby roots, house smoked ham, manchego."
Interpretation: Again with the bizarre trope of using baby versions of things in high-class dining. It doesn't even say what type of roots: tree roots? Grass roots? Carrots?
Item: Duck Liver Mousse, $15
Description: "red wine-braised onions, country white croutons."
Interpretation: I'm assuming you need the red wine to stomach the fact that someone had the idea to turn a liver into mousse. The mental image conjured by the name is pretty gruesome. Also, I don't know what country white croutons are from, but they sound overly processed and a little racist.
The only type of mousse I find acceptable.
