Bruno Deshayes Copywriting Blog

I am sure you are salivating at the thought of devouring such a treat! Yet the fad in nouvelle cuisine is taking us into unfamiliar paths. It's all in the mind of the beholder.

Tastes, the way you dress, the music you like, etc... are the things that differentiate us. Life would be quite boring if we all came out of the same mould.

In terms of food you have to be mindful of foreign tastes. Spicy dishes have gained some appeal maybe for the wrong reasons. During the war a copious amount of pepper was used to hide the taste of some unfamiliar meat served to famished folks.

Unknowingly they might have eaten the neighbour's cat, dog, rabbit or just a fat rat, possum or squirrel who ran astray past the back of the kitchen. With strong spices you can't differentiate mutton from goat or venison from kangaroo, pigeon from chicken or donkey from camel.

If you are going out in some unchartered suburb here are a few pointers to check: Visit the bathroom before sitting at a table. The care and cleanliness of the restroom is akin to the care and cleanliness of the kitchen. It's even likely the same person cleans both. Before dropping your guests at the entrance check out the back access of the restaurant. A pile of empty tins of dog food at the rear of a Chinese restaurant might be a telltale of what's really on the menu.

Some foreign restaurants can't really explain what you are eating so the menu is just a list of numbers. We'll have number 5 for entree, number 27 for main course and number 33 for dessert. Other establishments display colour photographs of the dishes you can order.

The term restaurant should only be applied to outlets where you sit down at a table and use cutlery to bring the food to your mouth. If you feast on something out of a styrofoam container or out of a paper wrapper it should be called an eatery.

Restaurants don't just cater to empty stomachs though. The appeal of course is to provide an attractive ambience to entertain your guests when you can't be bothered to prepare a meal for them at home. The fact though is that you learn so much more about somebody by visiting them in their own environment than by meeting them in a public place. A young man may never get to sample the culinary skills of a would-be bride before he proposes to her - a classic mistake especially if you come from two different cultures.

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