Living in a different culture can always cause dissonance. My first experience came over a group dinner; this was our first restaurant whose menu was only in Italian. For me, not knowing much more than ciao and buongiorno (hello and good morning), ordering was more than a challenge. An entire menu of classic Italian cuisine that I could not read a line, but following with the cultural immersion experience I took a shot at ordering, and bruschetta it was. Having what I thought was similar at an American restaurant I felt I had made a good choice.
As the waiter brings me my plate, it looks nothing as I suspected, but I am in Italy and assumed that was it and I began to eat. Some time passed when they brought out another order, it was my bruschetta and I had been eating one of the professor’s pizza. The details were worked out between others in the native tongue, but this was not a good start to my Italian food ordering.
We were not going to let the bruschetta go to waste, so our table decided to share. That was until we realized the objects on top of the bread that we assumed was a vegetable were in fact anchovies, another Italian menu mishap in the same evening. Needless to say, I will no longer be ordering without translating.
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