Hirsch wines & dinner (menu)

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey
Hirsch Vineyards is an interesting enterprise developed on property that no one thought would work, but Mr Hirsch persisted.

Next to the ocean (you can see the white caps), it gets lots of fog...

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The results are delicious Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs.

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. . . . Pete
 
With the domestic wines I thought you would almost have a chance not to present a menu that butchered a foreign language.

Is that just a Houston thing? Is there no one in the city who proofreads menus before having an event? Is it a point of patriotic pride to mangle foreign languages at every opportunity?

Unreal!
 
I know we've been down similar roads before, and many of us have stopped commenting on this aspect of the menus you present.

But still, the consistency boggles the mind.
 
Sorry the restaurant's work is irritating to some. They put on a good show, especially with some thoughtful food/wine pairings.

. . . . Pete
 
originally posted by Peter Creasey:

Sorry the restaurant's work is irritating to some.
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I don't know if irritating is the right word. (Sure it grates a little)

Mainly I'm just confused and amazed at your subculture of Houstonians who clearly care about food and wine and spend a lot of time and money on both fronts. But also care so little about the cultures from where the food and wine come that they cannot be bothered to spellcheck the menus.

Most high-end food/wine outfits that I know are pretty attentive to detail.
 
Given your rejoinders, the laid back approach must grate more than "a little"... which sensitivity, of course, is your right and is not a problem. In any case, your interest is appreciated.

Occasionally, typos tend to be a bit irksome to me.

It sounds, sadly, like you would not enjoy coming to outlier Houston.
 
Thinking positively, Houston might be the ideal market to beta-test a menu-designing software containing an all-language spell-checker.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
With the domestic wines I thought you would almost have a chance not to present a menu that butchered a foreign language.

Is that just a Houston thing? Is there no one in the city who proofreads menus before having an event? Is it a point of patriotic pride to mangle foreign languages at every opportunity?

Unreal!
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You forget they've been devastated by the recent hurricane. I would give these wealthy oilmen a break!
 
I will admit that using OUVO for UOVO more than grates me (juliennes me? mandolines me?).

But no one in Houston (restaurant or diner) seems to care, and so why should I.
 
originally posted by Cole Kendall:
I will admit that using OUVO for UOVO more than grates me (juliennes me? mandolines me?).

But no one in Houston (restaurant or diner) seems to care, and so why should I.
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More to Rahsaan's point, why not write it in English? Really, what is so déclassé about the word egg? What I think grates on this bored - in particular - is the provincial pretentiousness of these menus.
 
Putting the titles of dishes in foreign languages is already a bit of an affection, though one common enough to the restaurant business. Persistent inability to spell the words from other languages that they are using turns it comical, though not grating. I would second the suggestion of others above me: since the writers of these menus can't get the French and Italian spellings correctly, and, since, in at least some of these cases, they are clearly translating back from English, sometimes by guess and by god, perhaps they should just write the menus in English in the first place.
 
I am reminded of a scene in Umberto Eco's Baudolino, when the title character meets a young person far from his homeland. Baudolino speaks many languages but does not recognize what the young man (well, actually a skiapod) is saying, and asks him (in Greek) what language he is speaking. Weaver translates the response, presumably also in Greek (written in less than grammatical Italian in the original):

"I not know what language spoke. I believe you foreigners and spoke a language made up like foreigners."
 
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