Silly sausage
(S ausage on the menu: Suzhou, China)
Menus are one of the most entertaining items in most restaurants in SIP – most of them are translated (to an extent, at least) into English. The obligatory spelling and translation mistakes are always a winner with me, especially since I make them myself to the hilarity of Chinese friends. The restaurants expecting most foreign visitors tend to supply a menu heavily stocked with images of the food and I find this extra detail indispensible. Ying and I once read ‘Lions Head soup’, but I learned last night that it contains no lions, or cats, just meat made into a kind of small dumpling. Of course, the translations are often flawed and cause much hilarity, but I think this is the first time a lone image has made me guffaw so loudly with such amusement. Right in the centre of this Japanese Sushi restaurant menu; a sausage. A single sausage, shining from the glossy menu pages greeted me as I perused the different dishes on offer. It is reasonable to expect that some western style dishes might creep into menus here, especially given the prevalence of foreign faces eating out, but this astonished even me. The blob of mayo just finished me off, the whole image just looked completely ridiculous.
Myself and two friends visited the restaurant together last night and all of us found the appearance of the ‘S ausage’ bizarre, but I found it completely uproarious, and thought it was perhaps linked in part to the Japanese beer I was drinking. Quite the contrary, it is as funny now as it was then. I think the best part is that the sausage looks cheap and rather withered, not particularly appetising, especially when surrounded by all manner of Japanese delicacies. The addition of a space between the ‘S’ and ‘ausage’ is also rather confusing. I thought I might also draw attention to the ‘Deep Fried Cartilage’ on the bottom right of the menu. I’m not the biggest fan of it, but it is vaguely edible, done well.
I like that one! Did you also find the French Flies on the menu?
We did! I also liked ‘Agitated Fried’, whatever that is…
I just looked at the sausage picture again… I can’t look at it without laughing. It’s just too funny.
Well, shi zi tou ( lion’s head) is quite a well-known Chinese dish.
It is simply meatball made of minced pork. It could be a very nice dish.
Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my GOD!! From this day forth we have to use the term “S-uasage!! XXX