Overused Menu Words And Phrases That Make Customers Want To Scream
Dining out can be one of life's greatest pleasures, but it doesn't come without pain. For one thing, at today's prices every restaurant dinner is a splurge that makes you feel like you're going broke. Rude servers can also ruin your meal (although we make an exception for the restaurants that are mean to their customers on purpose, as masochistic diners might consider it part of the charm). For those of us in the food writing business, though, what really burns our bourguignon is restaurants that try to get creative with the menu but keep trotting out the same tired-out terms which annoy anyone who tries to read it.
Some common menu phrases may be difficult to interpret without a glossary, but once you look them up, you'll find they do serve a purpose by telling you how the dish is cooked or what ingredients are used. Other descriptors, however, have very little value other than to occupy space and look pretentious. The restaurant staff may feel they add a certain elegance or down-home, folksy authenticity, depending on what vibe they're aiming for, but somebody should tell them these worn-out words and phrases are actually achieving the opposite effect.
Annoying menu terms
So, what makes these overused menu terms so irksome? There are some menu terms that we don't mind seeing over and over again; "with bacon," for example, is a phrase that's always welcome, as is "free refills." The reason why these ones make us want to throw a full-on Gordon Ramsay tantrum, however, is because they're just not helpful. Some seem to be promising something that just isn't true, while others are only stating the obvious. Some are misleading, outdated, or bring up concepts such as death or digestion that we'd really rather not think about while eating. There are also descriptors that don't mean anything at all but are just so much unnecessary verbiage, padding out the menu in the same way a limp kale leaf is used to dress up a plate with a too-skimpy serving.
| Sammie, sando | Abbrevs are so 2014. |
| Bites | Bite is a verb. It's also what we feel like doing to whoever decided it should be used to describe anything small and edible. |
| Gourmet | This word is like the 20th century version of "foodie," but it was over-applied to any food items vaguely deemed to be fancy. When Gourmet magazine ceased publishing in 2009, it should have been retired from the lexicon. |
| Handheld | Oh, thanks for the instructions. We wouldn't want to look silly eating our sandwiches with a knife and fork. |
| Hand-made | We're interpreting this as "genuine human hands opened the bag and turned on the microwave." |
| Handcrafted | Sounds like it's been nailed together. |
| Unctuous | This word either means greasy or sycophantic, and we'd prefer our food to be neither. |
| Spring chicken | As opposed to an old hen? That's setting a pretty low standard. |
| Farm fresh | Yes, they're eggs, so they came from a farm of some sort. Fresh? Well, we'd hope so. Promising non-rotten eggs is pretty much the bare minimum. |
| Farm to table | More like farm-to-fable, since too many "farm-to-table" claims are nothing but lies. (Even if they are true, we really don't want to know that our pork chops once went by the name of Arnold.) |
| Fresh-caught | No, please tell us you didn't pull that salmon out of the dirty, Al Capone victim-infested waters of Lake Michigan. All seafood is fresh when it's caught, and nearly all of it is frozen immediately afterwards, and that is exactly as it should be. |
| Falling off the bone | Fall-off-the-bone ribs aren't always a good thing, you know. Sometimes they're just overcooked. |
| Cooked to perfection | Flatter yourself much? |
| To die for | Ditto. (Unless you mean it's actually poisoned? We signed up for a meal, not a cameo in a mystery novel.) |
| Best | Unless you can truthfully cite specifics such as "voted best burger in Pewaukee, Wisconsin by TripAdvisor users," using this word just comes across as more meaningless self-flattery. |
| World famous | Now you're getting downright delusional. |
| Smothered | Why so violent? We just want some cheese on our enchiladas; we don't want them to be dying under there. |
| Under a blanket of | While it certainly sounds more peaceful than smothering, we also don't want to visualize our food taking a nap, only to be rudely awakened at first bite. |
| Slathered | Now this just sounds like a sloppy mess. |
| Artisanal | What does this even mean? Cobbled together in some dusty old workshop by a guy who gave up halfway through his PhD thesis? |
| All-natural | Not the flex you think it is. Some very unpleasant things are also all-natural, like what comes out of the back end of a cow. |
| Homemade | Whose home was it made in, and how did it get here? (Also, was their kitchen up to the health code, or are we going to find cat hairs in our food?) |
| Infused | More like misused. Tea is an infusion because the leaves are steeped then strained out. If you stir cocoa powder into whipped cream, you've made it chocolate-flavored, not "chocolate-infused." |
| Scented | Meaning, you didn't use enough of the seasoning that it counts as a flavoring? Like Jimmy John's says, smells are free, but if we're paying we want to taste it too. |
| Hint | The menu has to tell us you used this presumably expensive ingredient since otherwise we wouldn't ever have guessed. |
| Whisper | Just like a hint, only even more pretentious. |
| Sinful | It's just dessert; it's not something we're going to go to confession for. |
| Decadent | Seriously, we're just eating cake, no need to call the vice squad. |
| Crispy | Using this descriptor for your chicken or french fries seems redundant or downright defensive. It's deep-fried; it's supposed to be crispy, so this should really go without saying. |
| Golden-brown | Umm, basic expectations. Again. That's the color many cooked foods are supposed to be, so throwing in this term is just an unnecessary indicator that you're doing things the standard way. |
| Board | It's the late 2020s and we're all bored of boards by now. |
| Anything-cuterie | If it's not cured meats, it's not charcuterie. There's nothing cute about seacuterie, barbecuterie, et cetera. |
| Aioli | This word is acceptable only if it actually means a garlic and olive oil emulsion. If it's just another flavored mayo, then no. Call it what it is. |
| Oven-roasted | As opposed to roasted in the dishwasher? Or roasted on TripAdvisor? |
| Bisque | Okay if it's a creamy seafood soup since this is what a bisque is supposed to be, but if it's applied to something without seafood (like mushroom bisque) this is incorrect usage, and also affected. What's wrong with calling a soup a soup? |
| Mouthwatering | Any descriptor that refers to the digestive process is instantly off-putting. |
| Drool-worthy | Even worse than mouthwatering. It's kind of cute when a big dog drools, but it's not something we want to see (or even think about) anyone doing in a restaurant. |
| Melt in your mouth | Is it M&Ms? If not, give the candy back its catchphrase and find a different descriptor. |
| Lip-smacking | How do you smack your lips? Whatever this action even means, it sounds like something that should only be done in private (or not at all). |
| Piping hot | Only if it's haggis on Burns Night and an actual bagpiper accompanies it to the table. (Although it would also have been acceptable had the late Rowdy Roddy Piper ever appeared on "Hot Ones.") |
| Veggie | This is a sit-down restaurant with plates and silverware. Let's all use our adult words. |
| Zesty | This is a pretty meaningless term, when you come to think about it. What flavor profile is it describing, exactly? Is the food spicy? Sour? Pungent? Or just a random filler word meant to imply that it has a flavor of some sort? |