Pronunciation Problems within the Kitchen

I used to work in Vegas where the ethnic diversity is very high. So chances were in the kitchens you worked with many people who could speak English at a basic level. With that said, pronunciation was always a funny topic!

One of my favorite and most memorable moments was when I had one of them label "Sunchokes" that I had just roasted. I go into the back walk-in to see them labeled "Sancho."

Anybody else have people mislabel or mispronounce things within the kitchen?

Expresso (espresso)
Kwuhnoa (quinoa)
Shureesso (chorizo)
Brooshetta (bruschetta)
Chipotill (chipotle)
Crude-aights (crudite)
Fo (pho)

Oh oh oh..

War-sester-shire sauce (Worcestershire sauce)

Not quite the same but the lady who works for us in our cafe has a bit of a hearing impediment. This isn't normally a problem at all except for the day when she took a phone order from a customer who also has a hearing impediment and whose speech is quite thick. The amount of hey? hey? hey? I heard coming from the phone I thought we were taking a catering order for the whole field of the Melbourne Cup/Kentucky Derby/Grand National.

Lots of Italians, French and Polish at my last place, where it was not uncommon to hear lines like 'putain kurwa dio' during preptimes. As for labels;
Bata letice (butter lettuce)
Chix feet (fat)
See best (sea bass)

err day, err tang. it's a constant struggle. i've gotten really good at reading body language because half the time i cant understand what the f my cooks are trying to say but i can see what they mean via context and what their movements convey.

I have terrible hearing and I mis-hear a lot of things.
In a busy kitchen, venison sounds like medicine and vongole sounds like creme brulee!

Also:

Pretzels (Brezel)
Sourkraut (Sauerkraut)

Kippington said:

I have terrible hearing and I mis-hear a lot of things.
In a busy kitchen, venison sounds like medicine and vongole sounds like creme brulee!

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:biggrin: I have the same problem too many years surfing, motorcycles, & carving thousands of Ice sculptures with a chain saw. Fast talking women with high voices on the phone I'm lost:scratchhead:

On my food truck, I have a "Kalbi tots" item and for some reason at least every day if not twice a day people order the "kalabi" tots. Where do they get the extra "a" and syllable from? Very hard not to give them a dirty look.

One of the cooks was by the walkin so I asked him to grab peas. He turned to me and gave me the peace sign and said “peas”.

This thread reminds me, I refuse to pronounce 'jamon' as 'hamon', for reasons I'm sure many of you would understand! :biggrin:

One of the corporate chefs for the kitchen I work has a very thick French accent and when he says swordfish it sounds like squirrel so for the past 3 years every time a ticket is called with swordfish it is referred to as squirrel. New people in the kitchen always look at the veterans strange hahahaha

Over the last 4 years I’ve gotten into, and so far this year, have started falling out of mycophilia. I want to gently punch anyone who pronounces morel “moral”. Mind you, English is my second language and I grew up in the hood and have heard some pretty butchered talk, and on top of that no one really knows how to pronounce the tough Latin mushroom names, I get it. But come on now...it’s morels, not morals. *Sigh*

Co-worker mispronounces Peanuts. He drops the 't' when he says it

turbochef422 said:

One of the cooks was by the walkin so I asked him to grab peas. He turned to me and gave me the peace sign and said “peas”.

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i would have grabbed the peas myself at that point and threw it at him

M1k3 said:

Co-worker mispronounces Peanuts. He drops the 't' when he says it

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Yup. In Japan we had a smoothie called Peanut Punch. Since the LNs had s tendency to pluralize some words, you can imgine how their English pronunciation sounded. Needless to say, an endless source of amusement for most of the BOH staff.
Where I am now we have, aside from Americans, there are Germans, Turks and Greeks in the kitchen. I’ve heard stuff described with words that don’t exist in any language.

M1k3 said:

Co-worker mispronounces Peanuts. He drops the 't' when he says it

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I worked in Hong Kong in the early 1990s. The Cantonese pronounce peanuts the same way.
I remember being very hungover the first time I heard a cook say the "the Chinese use peanus to make oil"...

ecchef said:

Yup. In Japan we had a smoothie called Peanut Punch. Since the LNs had s tendency to pluralize some words, you can imgine how their English pronunciation sounded. Needless to say, an endless source of amusement for most of the BOH staff.
Where I am now we have, aside from Americans, there are Germans, Turks and Greeks in the kitchen. I’ve heard stuff described with words that don’t exist in any language.

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parbaked said:

I worked in Hong Kong in the early 1990s. The Cantonese pronounce peanuts the same way.
I remember being very hungover the first time I heard a cook say the "the Chinese use peanus to make oil"...

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Funny thing is, he's not from Asia. He's from Mexico.

I worked at a country club. The banquet manager had marilyn crab cakes and cold slaw on her banquet menu. She also spelled vinaigrette- vigoigette. Worked another place where the chef had "haircut verts" on his permanent menu.

A large portion of the employees where I work (mostly people who have been there forever) call sriracha "sirachee".

A bigger issue for me is spelling. Once saw a guy grate 5 pounds of Chihuahua cheese and bag it up and lable every bag with a different spelling. One of them was legit "chchiahahahua". I'll never forget it. Like what word in the history of forever has started with "chch"?

Does anyone know how to stop spelling banananana… ?

PooBear said:

A bigger issue for me is spelling. Once saw a guy grate 5 pounds of Chihuahua cheese and bag it up and lable every bag with a different spelling. One of them was legit "chchiahahahua". I'll never forget it. Like what word in the history of forever has started with "chch"?

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Hmm...

As an English speaker working in South America, I was always the one ****ing up the labels and names, haha.

podzap said:

Hmm...

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Foot, meet mouth.

What gets me is that I’ll explain the way to say something several times to someone whose first language is English. They still won’t get it and that pisses me off. Someone who speaks English as a second language I’m totally understanding if they say it a little different. In other countries I’m the guy that can’t pronounce correctly and hope that they give me the same lee way. A lot of the ones we come up with ourselves and joke around in a real country accent. Confit = corn feet.

I use a lot of cotija cheese and always have....and have yet to have a sous that doesnt call it "cogeeta"