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[[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/OzyAndMillie https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ozy_and_millie.png]]]]
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A character is eating at a fancy restaurant where the menu is in a foreign language. Attempting to appear sophisticated and impress their date, the character points at something impressive sounding on the menu and says they'll have that, only for the waiter to inform them that they have just ordered the dress code, the chef or something similar (see MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels). This may also occur if the character is nearsighted, and in bad cases what they try to order from is not even the menu.

Alternatively, the character could order an actual dish, but add a provision that indicates they have no idea what it is they have just ordered. When PlayedForLaughs, often involves the waiter bringing back a heaping helping of the region's finest ForeignQueasine. Compare IsItSomethingYouEat. In that case, they at least ''ask'' before attempting to order the wifi or the pageone. See also WrongRestaurant, in which the character orders something from an entirely different establishment than the one they're visiting.

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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Advertising]]
* A TV ad had a young woman driving the advertised car, following along to a "Learn Italian" tape when a distinguished man pulls up next to her. He talks to her in Italian; she breezily replies in Italian (subtitled) "Good toast, waiter. I would like a slice of suitcase!" and drives off. Hopefully she picks up a bit more before her trip to Italy.
* UsefulNotes/McDonalds had a commercial on Finnish TV where a Finnish boy goes to an obscure restaurant in an even more obscure BananaRepublic and phones to his friend in Finland, asking: ''The menu says 'culebra'. Is it edible?'' The friend answers: ''Yes, it is just the ordinary chow. Go for it!''. The commercial continues: "It wasn't ordinary chow. was it? In [=McDonalds=] you know what you get."[[note]]There is a place ''called'' Culebra in Central America. It translates as "Snake Island".[[/note]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'': When stopping in Hong Kong, Joseph claims that he's been there enough times to be able to order from the menus. Yet, when the food arrives, it's not quite what he expected. A downplayed example, as it turned out that the mistakenly ordered food was still quite delicious - the trope is in play to poke fun at Joseph's ignorance on foreign matters.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comedy]]
* Creator/JasperCarrott has a routine about visiting Hong Kong with friends and visiting a restaurant where people ordered by pointing at animals in cages. An animal would disappear into the kitchen and a little later would reappear cooked on a plate. Carrot noticed a scruffy dog sniffing around the street tables. His friend nudged him and said "For Christ's sake don't point at it!"
* Creator/SteveMartin's 1977 comedy album ''Wild and Crazy Guy'' had a routine about how attempting to order in a foreign language could lead to this.
-->The problem with trying to order in French, is that the waiter thinks you speak [fluent] French, and goes, ''[French-sounding gibberish]'' and you go, "...Yes!" And he brings you a shoe with cheese on it. And you also told him to force it down your throat. "I'll have a shoe with cheese on it, force it down my throat, and I want to massage your grandmother, okay?"
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/ArchieComics:''
** Archie takes Veronica to a fancy, Middle-Eastern restaurant which is so authentic the staff doesn't speak English. Archie assures Veronica that he ordered lamb, but Veronica says it doesn't taste right. Archie flags down a waiter, points to the meat, and asks, "Baa baa?". The waiter replies, [[ForeignQueasine "No! Hee-haw, hee-haw!"]]
** This one-page gag:
-->'''Betty:''' I heard that when Archie took you out to that fancy restaurant last night, he placed his order entirely in Chinese! I'll bet you were surprised!
-->'''Veronica:''' ''(fuming)'' You bet I was! It was an ''Italian'' restaurant!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Strips]]
* In one ''Belvedere'' strip Belvedere and his owner are sitting in a fancy restaurant while two waiters bring in a platter containing a cooked elephant.
-->'''Owner:''' Do you have to order in French?
* ''ComicStrip/CarlGiles'': When the family is in France, every attempt by would-be intellectual Henry to order steak and chips in French ends up with the family being served frogs legs.
* The ''WesternAnimation/MrMagoo'' comic strip has Magoo and Waldo at a Mexican restaurant. Magoo asks if the "Alvarados" are good, only to be informed that is the name of the proprietor. Magoo tetchily changes his order to hamburger.
* One ''ComicStrip/PearlsBeforeSwine'' strip had Guard Duck on a date with Maura, ordering "The chateaubriand, cooked medium well, and a glass of your finest pinot noir". Although the actual strip wasn't an example, Stephan Pastis said this about the strip in the "Pearls Sells Out" commentary:[[note]]For the record, [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting chateaubriand is a type of food]]. It's a kind of steak.[[/note]]
-->'''Stephan Pastis:''' I really don't know what chateaubriand is. It just sounded like something fancy you'd order in an expensive restaurant. I'm hoping it is actually a type of food.
* One Creator/GahanWilson cartoon shows a patron with an inedible pile of ashes on his plate, while a snooty waiter says, "It's a burnt telephone book. We gave it a fancy French name and you ordered it."
* ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'' manages both forms in one strip. Attempting to impress Sara, Jeremy orders the radicchio, "medium rare, of course". The waiter informs him that the raddichio is a salad and the chef prefers to serve it raw. As Sara and Connie dissolve in laughter, Walt attempts to make Jeremy feel better by saying that when he and Connie were dating he once ordered "jackets required".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13666795/1/Project-Management-for-Beginners Project Management for Beginners]]'':
-->'''Harry:''' So, what other challenges has your father done?\\
'''Hermione:''' Well, the longest one was when he built a model railway in the attic; that took ages because he made all the scenery and platforms and passengers by hand. When I was five, he built a small rowing boat from reclaimed wood and some scrap metal from a local junk yard, then he successfully rowed it across Derwentwater. Oh, and a few years ago we booked a holiday to Italy and Dad decided to learn Italian before we went. He only had four months to study it, so his target was just to become fluent enough to ask directions and order meals out and so on. Dad's grasp of spoken Italian was rather good for the most part, although I do remember one day in a Milanese bistro when I asked him to order me a glass of orange juice and a cheese sandwich for my lunch, and what showed up was a cup of coffee and a steak pie. And that was quite a surprise really, because Dad had told us it was a vegetarian restaurant!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* Played With in ''WesternAnimation/BonVoyageCharlieBrown'': Charlie Brown, Linus, Marcie, and Peppermint Patty stop to eat in a British pub while en route to France. However, being Americans, they're clearly not familiar with British cuisine as they are forced to ask the waiter for help in deciding what to eat. This doesn't help either as not one of them can [[LanguageBarrier understand the waiter's British English]].
-->'''Charlie Brown:''' What did he say?\\
'''Marcie:''' Perhaps I should have studied ''English'', not French.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/TheJerk'': Marie gets the escargot at a fancy restaurant after she and Navin become rich.
-->'''Navin:''' You would think that in a fancy restaurant at these prices you could keep the snails off the food!
* English version in ''Film/{{Komaa}}'': Hassan doesn't understand even basic English and attempts to order a "coffee shop".
* In ''Film/MrBeansHoliday'', when he decides to dine at the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Train_Bleu_(restaurant) Le Train Bleu]] in the Gare du Lyon, he winds up ordering a langoustine (Norway lobster), which he doesn't eat. Of note is that the paltry amount of spending money that was part of the prize was barely enough for his meal, forcing him to complete his journey without being able to buy anything.
* ''[[Creator/MaryKateAndAshleyOlsen Passport to Paris]]'' does this in a strange way. One of the twins, who is learning French at a high-school level, accidentally orders fish (''poissons'') when she wanted drinks ('''''b'''oissons'').
* In ''Film/WayOfTheDragon'', Bruce Lee's character goes into a restaurant in Italy and accidentally orders every soup on the menu (which later makes him have to pee a lot).
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[[folder:Jokes]]
* There is an UrbanLegend, where a girl sees some Chinese characters on a menu that "look pretty", so she has them tattooed on herself. Later on, someone from China sees her tattoo, and laughs hysterically; the characters actually read "cheap, but tasty".
* Joke example:
-->'''Customer:''' ''[poring over the menu]'' I'll have the... ''[italian-style pronunciation]'' pageone, please.\\
'''Waiter:''' That's not a dish, sir, that's "Page One".
* A joke that went around during the Bush administration, probably a holdover from UsefulNotes/BillClinton's years, too. A young lady came out to take the president's dinner order:
-->'''UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush:''' ''[poring over the menu]'' I'd like a quickie, please.\\
'''Dick Cheney:''' That's "''quiche''"!
* A man walks into a Georgian restaurant and orders a bunch of "your finest akhvlediani". The waiter answers: "It's our manager's last name, not a dish."
* A guy dining at a fancy restaurant is horrified to see some kind of bizarre or unappealing meal on the menu (such as deer horn or walrus blubber) and complains to the waiter, who goes and castigates the chef: "You forgot to translate the menu into French again!"
* A man walks into a restaurant in Mexico and tries using his minimal Spanish to order steak with mushrooms. Eventually he resorts to drawing a cow and a mushroom on his napkin. The waiter goes out for a few minutes, then comes back and hands him an umbrella and two tickets to a bullfight.
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[[folder:Literature]]
* In one ''Literature/TheBabySittersClub'' book, Claudia goes out with a guy she likes to a French restaurant. The guy is a very smart/intellectual type, and Claudia is trying to keep him from realizing she's not. She figures hey, she's not a picky eater, so she picks something on the menu at random. The "something" in question turns out to be ''escargot'', or snails. Which she then forces herself to eat to keep up the pretense.
* Creator/DaveBarry explained in his column "The Evil Eye" that he was getting too nearsighted to read restaurant menus, so he just points randomly at something which turns out to be his napkin, and tells the waiter, "I want that medium rare." This joke also appears in ''Dave Barry Turns 50'', with a medium-rare order of "We Do Not Accept Personal Checks."
* A very slight case, similar to the ''ComicStrip/PearlsBeforeSwine'' example below: Michel Houellebecq fed one of his characters chervil, [[http://coriscos.blogspot.pt/2010/10/michel-houellebecq-does-love-exist.html and admitted]] that he has no idea how chervil tastes and just thinks it's a pretty word.
* In ''[[Website/TheOnion Our Dumb World]]'''s entry on Burkina Faso, there's a joke about the very low literacy rate of that country when one of their diplomats tries to order a notice that an extra gratuity may be charged for large groups.
* A Paul Jennings short story has an illiterate boy as its protagonist. After being embarrassed when he tries to order "the ladies' room" with sauce at a fast-food restaurant, he simply resorts to saying "Same again" after the person before him orders. This backfires once when he gets given 15 cheeseburgers because the woman before him was a youth worker ordering for a social group.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'': while in Mount Pilot, Andy & Barney go to a fancy French restaurant. Andy isn't too proud to say he can't read the menu and just orders a steak. Barney points to menu items and gets stuff he never thought of as food.
* ''Series/BeverlyHills90210''. While in Paris, Brenda and Donna order "veal". Unfortunately, the English word "veal" sounds like the French word "cerveau". After being served their meal, the girls are horrified to learn they're eating. . .calf brains (a well known delicacy in France, but obviously not in the US).
* ''Series/EmilyInParis'': While having lunch with Mindy, Emily accidentally orders a condom with her croissant thanks to her awful French.
* ''Series/FridayNightLights'': In one episode Tim Riggins (very poor, basically one step up from living in a trailer) goes to lunch at a fancy country club with his girlfriend Lyla and her father (very affluent). He is visibly uncomfortable and decides to order squab as his meal (squab is domestic pigeon meat). He then specifies that he wants it ''rare''.
* Richie thinks he’s ordering a fruit plate in one ''{{Series/Highlander}}'' episode but he ends up getting a seafood plate. “Fruits d’mer” is French for “fruits of the sea” and is raw seafood.
* ''Series/KenanAndKel'': Kel tries to order at a Chinese restaurant, only to accidentally tell the waiter "I want to park my truck on your mother's face" in Chinese.
* There was a ''Series/MrBean'' sketch which involved him ordering Steak tartare, believing it was just a fancy steak, and the rest of the episode revolved around him trying to get rid of all the raw beef. The second movie had this when he orders the seafood platter by accident, not knowing any other French words but "oui".
* ''Series/RedDwarf'': Rimmer demanded gazpacho soup served hot, but gazpacho is served cold. He never, ever lived it down.
* From an episode of ''Series/{{Taxi}}'': "He insisted on ordering the meal in French. My main course was ten pats of butter."
* Levelled up as the basis for the "Mongolian Restaurant" sketch in the comedy show ''Series/TheTwoRonnies''. Typical comment / response: Ronnie: "That's disgusting", other Ronnie holding up two hands: "That's a lot of gusting".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* Music/RayStevens' song "Gourmet Restaurant" is filled with stuff like this:
-->''So I asked the waiter, "How's the beef?"\\
He said "Ze steak tartar is ze best you ever had."\\
But when he brought it, friends I thought I'd seen rare meat\\
But this wasn't even hurt real bad!\\\
I can understand chocolate eggs, and chocolate bunny rabbits, But a chocolate moose? Ain't never gonna catch on...''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* An ''Eric the Penguin'' birthday card had Eric in a coffee shop with a menu listing various expensive drinks, and a sign saying "Free wi-fi". So he tries to order "a free wiffy".
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[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/CyanideAndHappiness'':
** In one strip, a character orders some "lesbian cuisine." The waiter informs him that they have ''Lebanese'' cuisine. He needs some time to cope.
** In another, the character points to a sign and requests his "free wife." The waiter informs him that it's "free ''Wi-Fi''."
* ''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'': Llewellyn goes to a Chinese restaurant and tries to place his order in Chinese. The waiter brings him a shoe and a bowling ball.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* From ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'':
-->[[http://notalwaysright.com/now-in-original-extra-bandwidth-flavor/2121 "The serving of Wi-Fi, how big is the free portion?"]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'', Jon is at a French restaurant and tries to order in French and is served a pair of boiled athletic shoes by a FrenchJerk waiter. In another episode, he ends up ordering the chef's daughter with cheese on her.
* In ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' Helga, trying to pass herself off as Arnold's French pen pal whilst in disguise and with a very rudimentary knowledge of French, attempts to make a order from the menu of a fancy French restaurant. It isn't until she's happily tucking into the dish that the waiter mentions not many kids like eating cow brain and eggs... [[ForeignQueasine which prompts a dart to the bathroom]]. Arnold played it safe with a steak and fries.
* ''WesternAnimation/JamesBondJr'': In one episode, the snotty rich kid takes a girl to a restaurant and orders a meal in French. On his first attempt he orders a live lobster. When the focus returns to him after cutting to Bond's adventures for a while, he's finally managed to order ''something'' edible in French - a cheese sandwich.
* On ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'', Bullwinkle goes into a coffee shop and looks over the menu. Seeing that refills are free, he tells the waiter "think I'll have some of that there refill."
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Selma takes Hans Moleman out to dinner in order to seduce him ([[MyBiologicalClockIsTicking she wants a baby]], and by this time doesn't much care with who). He tries to read the menu but the waiter tells him it's the wine list. "Very good."
* ''WesternAnimation/WhatsNewScoobyDoo'': In "Pompeii and Circumstance", Fred is continually misreading his Italian phrase book. As a result, [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orderflub_3.png he orders a potted plant at a restaurant.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Artist James [=McNeil=] Whistler (as in [[WhistlersMother Mother]]) reportedly went to a restaurant in France and ordered a flight of stairs. (Probably a confusion between "escalier" for "stairs" and "escargot" for "snails".)
[[/folder]]
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