One of the delights of eating out is perusing menus for English words that have been chopped, tossed, diced and spliced.
Indian chefs are particularly gifted in this.
Kick-start your day with rice burbles - it most certainly will - or corn flaks, corn flexs, or corn flax.
Eggs offer some interesting combinations.
They come half scribled, screambled, bolid, deep fried, shallow frid, pouched, pooched and scram bled on plane tost.
The brave might care to try their luck with pain-cakes, leeches and cream, carate salad, pork cutarse, or a dreaded veal cutlet which begs the question, how bad is it going to be?
No matter, wash the lot down with a nice glass of pineapple blood, orange squish or cow juice (milk?) and ginger bumping milk (your guess is as good as mine).
Rice can be park-fried, plane-fried, part-fried or oiled and served with cowpea; take your pick.
Combine that with some chicken cripes, chicken arms (hard to come by, I would imagine), bum chicken or children soup and you should be in for an interesting taste sensation.
Sometimes it's preferable to stick to processed foods like caned vegetarian, dried meat floss or naked pawns.
Otherwise it might be best to order the fish.
How about some fried crap, rain blow trout, roast squit or tuna in grease?The Chinese are more fastidious with their spelling but brutally honest in their descriptions.
In China you may be tempted to try the dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crab, the sweat and sour bone in fragrant spinach or the double boiled forest frog.
My favourite is the pork with fresh garbage; presumably far nicer than the pork served with stale garbage on offer down the road.
At other times I had no idea what was meant.
The benumbed hot flies with belly silk and nuddles proved particularly perplexing.
And finally, if you don't believe me, see for yourself.
Japan has teppan yaki - before your cooked right eyes.
Roam: Inspiration and Invaluable Information for the Adventurous Traveller, is written by Dean Starnes. (HarperCollins Publishers, pbk, $40)
