Simon Schama on the language of food:
The overthrow of gastronomie for “fooding” is the most dramatic recent instance of a language act that is not just incidental to but inseparable from the constitution of a food universe. For it may be that we have now become too logorrhoeic for our own good, whether it’s the almost unimaginable proliferation of food journalism and cookbooks, the multiplication of television food programmes (I plead guilty as an occasional accomplice); the appalling habit (marked in the United States) of training waiting staff to deliver lengthy disquisitions and sermons on their specials — often, and inaccurately, with the personal pronoun attached (as in “my sea bass today comes with wild rice and a stuffing of celery root and rutabaga”). Then there is the menu itself — often a work of faux-literature minus any obligation to obey the basic rules of syntax.
A word of advice, one among many brainy passages:
I’ve made it my own rule of thumb — and I recommend it to you — never to order any item described with more than one verb.
Bon appétit.
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