Monday, March 16, 2009

The Great Pasta Confusion

I have noticed that the Chinese are very good at getting Western foods, particularly pastas, mixed up. When my mom came back from her teacher-exchange to China, she said that at one point her Chinese host took her to a Western restaurant. In the menu, there was a dish called Steak and Lasagna, except when they ordered it, there wasn't any lasagna; there was spaghetti. Her Chinese host kept calling it lasagna, and my mom tried to tell her, "That's not lasagna, it's spaghetti." (Of course, we wouldn't serve steak and spaghetti together, anyway.)

Now I've noticed a lot of pasta-confusions of my own: in the school cafeteria, which is run by a Chinese restaurant company. I've seen penne called macaroni, macaroni called penne, spaghetti called penne, macaroni called lasagna, etc. Luckily, the Chinese only know about those four types of pasta, because they'd be even more confused if you mixed in some of the more complicated pastas. For example, I'm doubtful that they could find out the difference between ravioli and tortellini, or spaghetti, linguini, and fettuccini.

2 comments:

ferskner said...

I can't believe your mom ordered a dish called Steak and Lasagna

Emma said...

She didn't, at least I don't think so. I think the Chinese host teacher ordered it for her.