Brissos have come to expect some unrecognisable words on the menus of preferred restaurants.
foreign words on the menu can be confusing
Ten years ago they may have avoided certain items such as the ‘confit de canard’ rather than risk embarassment asking the waiter or waitress to ‘please explain’, but these days Brisbane folk will be keen to order wagyu beef or penne amatriciana, and if they strike a menu full of novelty items they are happy to have the waiter/waitress go through it with them.
enoteca in Brisbane
After all, this performance by the bona fide ethnic waitress with the charming accent is an important part of the experience. A truly upmarket restaurant will have unfamiliar or foreign words in a ratio of at least 1:2 items on the menu. So Brissos will happily embrace cacio, queso, morcilla, lomo and cochinillo but when recounting their dining experience to friends, they will translate the item back into brisso slang rather than sound pretentious: “Bev had the suckling pig”.
One word that should be on every menu in Brisbane is qualunquismo. In a fantastic blog which lists 10 words that cannot be translated into English, qualunquismo is described thus:
Qualunquismo
Are you one of those people who really don’t care all that much about politics and issues in society? Then this word applies to you. The term came from a political party in Italy, in 1944, which promoted anti-political feelings and a mistrust of public organizations. The party was called the Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque or “the front of the ordinary man”. Rather appropriate considering how many people obviously feel this way about politics as is evidenced by the low voter turnouts that we often see in elections.
Given the active disdain for politics amongst Brissos and the annoyance with which they respond to elections, I figure that there must be qualunquismo in our diet: or in what is described by the aforementioned waiters/waitresses as ‘tap water’.
