This week, for our collaborative ‘architecture of food’ issue with chlorophyll magazine, we have an essay by Rebecca Thimmesch on what gets lost when global dishes are given English-language names.
No English Menu, Please
By Rebecca Thimmesch
I don’t consider myself a neurotic traveller, despite being a neurotic person. I don’t overplan, I’m not dead set on certain activities or attractions: in fact, I’m quite chill. But where my neuroses come out is in my pathological need to be the waiter’s favourite foreign table. The prize? Being handed the native language menu.
There’s an element of tourist shame here. I know that travel contributes on some level to gentrification, housing crises, rising costs, et cetera, and that many aren’t happy to hear American accents in their neighborhoods. In some ways, the local menu is an attempt to assure my hosts – and perhaps also myself – that I have good intentions within a problematic industry, that I do not expect that my language is always the lingua franca.
But there’s also a practical aspect.
Culinary language learning is its own form of phonics. When we learn about a new dish in another language, we learn it as more than the sum of its parts – imbued with meaning via flavour, not merely translation from English…
READ THE REST OF THE ESSAY ON CHLOROPHYLL.
Rebecca Thimmesch is a writer and cook based in East London. Her newsletter Chic! focuses on food, culture, hospitality, and having fun.
Catch up with the previous pieces from the ‘architecture of food’ issue:
Meat and Two Veg
Shellshocked
Priceless
No Catch
On Your Heart
The Whistleblower
Culture Club
The Making of Maamoul