Do you get flummoxed by a flambé?

IF YOU have ever sneakily used your mobile phone to Google a challenging restaurant menu you don’t understand, you are not alone.

Researchers have found that four in ten diners, or 41%, resort to the under-the-table tactic to make it look as though they know their smacked cucumber from their flambéed Steak Diane.

And while many top chefs will craft menus to create intrigue and spark conversation, almost half of all diners, or 48%, said they are baffled and do not understand many of the terms – and rely on the help of their phones.

‘Smacked’, often used to describe ‘smacked cucumber’ that is smashed in order to help it absorb other flavours, is the most baffling, with 72% needing online help to explain it.

Some 38% needed help with the French word ‘flambé’, which means dousing a meat in alcohol such as brandy or rum, and then igniting it to enhance the flavour. The findings of the survey were revealed by restaurant booking website Resy, which asked 1,000 adults about how they dealt with these problems in restaurants.

Sacha Henry, head chef at London restaurant Shankey’s, admits that his menus are deliberately challenging.

He said: ‘We like to have fun with our menu and the way we phrase things. We ultimately want to create dishes that invite conversation and keep the ambiguity open to dialogue, from our “Executive Lamb” to our “Monkey Tail” fish – that actually refers to a Monkfish tail. But we don’t want anyone reading it to feel they can’t ask a question about what the dish is. Then we have all the fun explaining it and seeing their faces when they try it.’