Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Are you up for a canton cooking Hong Kong snack?

During a weekend in the città eterna I noticed this colorful street sign full of little red Chinese balloons announcing a restaurant near Roma's Termini train station.

The phrase CANTON COOKING HONGKONG SNACK caught my attention. Isn't it a little demeaning to label your food speciality as a snack? Snack is defined as (1) a hurried or light meal (2) food eaten between meals. Even McDonald's labels their food as a meal, which sounds more solid and fulfilling. I typically don't associate Chinese restaurants to fast food, but maybe this is what the owner intended to transmit - "Before you go catch that train come for a fast bite in our canton cooking HongKong snacks!"

Another curiosity about this sign is that everything is written in English except for the words 'Restaurante' and 'Internazionale'. The first one is written or in Portuguese or in Spanish, while the second is written in Italian. Is quite ironic that the word 'Internazionale' is not written in English! Why this language confusion? Would they want to write word 'Restaurante' as 'Ristorante' (Italian) or as 'Restaurant' (English)? For sure the closest one is the english one, maybe someone added the extra 'e' at the end for mistake.

I have no idea how much it costs to create and maintain a sign like this in one of the main avenues in Rome, but it must not be cheap. Couldn't the restaurant owner invest a little more time in proof reading the sign? But if was a 'normal' restaurant street sign anouncing it probably wouldn't have caught my attention the way this one did, but not everyone is nerdy as I tend to be.

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