Have you ever stared at the menu of an upscale Nigerian restaurant and looked around to be sure you’re still in Nigeria? That you’ve somehow not walked through a portal into an alternate reality? You just want to eat eba and ogbono soup but there’s nothing like that on the menu.  You start to look around, hoping to catch the eye of one of the waiters, to ask them if they have something familiar but decide against it last minute because you don’t want people to think you’re a local champion. 

You’ve worked hard enough to afford those types of restaurants and you’ll be damned if you give up at the first obstacle. So you clear your throat and order “cassava flake pudding paired with bush mango sauce” and hope for the best. You don’t know what bush mango is but you guess cassava flake pudding is eba, bracing yourself for whatever is the bush mango sauce. Restaurant menus can full of surprises and not all of them are good ones.

You know the type — menus that read like a thesaurus was thrown into a blender, sieved through a fine mesh of bourgeoisie, and poured onto the page. You’ll find items such as “artisanal free-range chicken breast drizzled with a reduction of exotic spices,” or “hand-crafted pasta infused with rare herbs and topped with a foraged mushroom medley.” You’ll be sitting there, wondering, “Ibo la tun jasi bayi?” groping around inside your head to figure out what ‘foraged’ means. Why does it matter if the chicken is artisanal? Are there white-collar chickens? It’s easy to get lost with those kinds of menus designed to razzle and dazzle.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good meal, but when the menu is trying too hard to impress me, I start to get suspicious. Like, wozzgoing on? Are these dishes really as fancy as they sound, or are they just an attempt to justify the prices?

But these menus are nothing compared to the confusing ones. Have you ever found yourself staring at a menu item, completely baffled as to what it could possibly be? Take, for instance, the “Glorious Nigerian Sunrise” – what does that even mean? Is it just a drink? A dish? A metaphor for life? Who knows? Let’s not even get into the fact that Nigerian sunrise is never glorious—can you even focus on it while stuck in Ikorodu Road traffic? And let’s not forget the “Rainbow Unicorn Burger”. Is it made with real unicorns? Does it come with a side of fairy dust? Or was the cattle whose meat was used for the burger gay? 

The confusion only gets worse when the menu is written in a font style that is impossible to read, or worse yet, in a foreign language. Because you want to eat out, you have to learn Mandarin and French. How are you supposed to know that ‘poisson’ is fish? What does ‘poutine’ mean? These people need to leave us alone. We are still processing the meaning of “a la carte”.

And don’t even get me started on the dessert menus. I once saw an item called “chocolate sin.” I mean, I love chocolate, but I don’t need my dessert to make me feel like I am going to hell. Heaven is always the goal. 

I think you should research the menu of the restaurant online ahead of visiting so you won’t run into surprises. Google ‘velouté’ and ‘carbonara’ and ‘falafel’ before you leave your house to avoid stories that touch. Decide on what you want and don’t want. You don’t want to go with your haunch and order something only to realise after the fact that you just ate the balls of a ram — or worse, find eyeballs staring at you in your soup. And finally, do not be afraid to ask questions for clarity without shame — the chef. The waiter. Heck, the manager. You’re about to spend a small fortune on food. You deserve to know what you’re eating.