Biggest food mix up...

On my first adventure to the US I went to a mexican drive thru and ordered chips and salsa. I was amazed when I got back to my girlfriends to find nacho's sitting in the box, I was ready to play hell until I realised the mix up in the language

so has anyone had a similar mix up or am I the only one?

In Germany I ordered a salami sandwich and ended up with a cucumber sandwich.

Ordered pizza in Poland and ended up with a pita bread, cheese and olives.

The one that takes the cake is when I attempted to say eggplant in China.  I ended up with a plate of shredded cucumber (maybe) that was covered in sugar. 

This isn't about me, but when my Japanese grandmother first lived in California she was very excited to see tacos advertised at little stands everywhere. She bought one and thought it looked a bit strange and then upon closer inspection realized that tacos were not tako (octopus).

For me, I ordered toast in Austria and recieved a grilled cheese sandwhich.

On my first adventure to the US I went to a mexican drive thru and ordered chips and salsa. I was amazed when I got back to my girlfriends to find nacho's sitting in the box, I was ready to play hell until I realised the mix up in the language

so has anyone had a similar mix up or am I the only one?

I had similar on my first trip to the US in 1998. Went to a restaurant and ordered blackened cat fish with sweet potato chips. And when it came it was crisps, I had a split second moment!
It still takes me a moment whenever I see chips listed on the menu......but then go to an Irish bar and they will list "fish and chips" on the menu and it's what we call chips!

The other one, I was reading a John Grisham book and it mentioned having "biscuits and gravy", I honestly couldn't work out what he meant. I asked my then girlfriend in Chicago online and I still didn't understand, I found out when I went......I still don't get how a white sauce is called gravy!

The one that takes the cake is when I attempted to say eggplant in China. 

Interesting......the term in the UK is "takes the biscuit"!

DW and I keep coming up with these slight differences!

This is actually a UK one (and I'm British ), but a few months ago, I went out for brunch in Bristol with my friends and I ordered a BLT... I must have spent too much time in the US, because for some reason I was expecting it to be a toasted BLT with crunchy bacon and instead I got a cold, untoasted bread sandwich with floppy bacon .

While I was eurorailing in Austria as a student, my friend and I sat down in a restaurant and asked for the menu. To our surprise, the waitress brought over salad, followed by an enormous steak and fries/chips. After a bit of gesturing we realised that she thought we were ordering the set menu, not asking for the menu, and refused to take back the food as we'd already eaten the salad.

My friend was vegan and I can't digest beef, so our steaks went untouched and we went hungry that night. As a student in genteel poverty, we could only afford one proper meal a day, living on bread, cheese and water for lunch and breakfast. I think I cried after that meal.

I've not had many mix ups here.  I can only remember one where I ordered a salad from a cafe.  Because they had some salads that looked like col slaw, beetroot salad, and what looked to be some sort of pasta salad, I specifically ordered a "green salad".  They brought me a salad only made out of green things (lettuce, green pepper, cucumber, green onion).

On the QM2, we had lunch in the formal dining room once and I ordered a club sandwich.  They brought me a sandwich that had been coated in egg and fried.  Then the head waiter argued with me that that was how they did it in the UK.  I don't know why he was trying to make me feel like an ignorant American.  Luckily my husband was there to say that he had never had a club sandwich with egg coating, and he grew up here.  The head waiter then tried to say it was really in Europe they ate them that way.  I really hope that dude lost his job at some point.  He was the biggest jerk the whole trip.

The whole thing was, I wasn't trying to get him to admit they made a mistake.  I just wanted something different because I had had a bad reaction to eggs the month before.  I don't mind eggs normally, but I went about a year without eating them to try to avoid the problems I had.  I can't remember if they brought me something different.  Keep in mind, this is a trip where the food was inclusive, so by rights, I could have eaten the friggen sandwich and asked for something else on top of it.

One of DW's over here was asking for chicken salad, she expected diced up chicken in mayo. What she got was slices of chicken with some lettuce, tomato etc.

You should see the look on visitors faces when she asks if they want "hot tea", it's a look to say "how else would I want it?"

The tea thing reminds me of when I went to a club with some friends for NYE.  I ordered an "iced tea" because I was underage (and had a special underage stamp on my hand), and they brought me a Long Island iced tea.  I had never had that particular 90s delicacy at that point and didn't realise the mistake until I had finished a quarter of it.

First time I was in Ireland (well before I lived in the UK) my then boyfriend and I had been eating standard Irish breakfasts the whole trip, so about 2/3 of the way through our trip, we stopped at a B&B and the lady asked us if we wanted 'eggs or a bacon roll or waffles'- So of course, we were sick of eggs, black puddings, bacon, etc, and both of us drooled at the thought of waffles with syrup and butter.  Imagine our shock the next morning when we got potato waffles with baked beans!  

oh, I love potato waffles with baked beans (but not for breakfast)!

First time I was taken to a fish and chips restaurant, I was a bit taken aback that there was no veg. or salad on the menu. So I ordered "cucumber". Turned out to be a big fat pickle.

My second trip to the UK back in the '89 or so was to visit a pen pal. It was in June and it was unseasonably hot. After a long flight and car drive, I was parched. When we got to his house, his Mum asked me what I wanted to drink. Without even thinking, I blurted 'iced tea'. His poor Mum was so confused! Not only did she think it was a vile idea, but they only had teeny tiny ice cubes (they bought these cool 'ice cube' bags - not sure you can even get those there anymore). So basically, I ended up with watery hot tea.

oh, I love potato waffles with baked beans (but not for breakfast)!

Oh me too, but it was just nothing like what we had in our heads at that time! 

I don't know if I would call this a mix-up, but I've had tea served in many different ways in the US.  

The first time I ordered it at Starbucks, it came as one tea bag in an enormous cup with hot, but not boiling, water.  Well, the poor little tea bag just couldn't deal with all that water, so after I put milk in it, it ended up grey and weak.  The couple of times I returned to Starbucks after that, I asked for the smallest cup and to not fill it fully with water - there's no room for the milk otherwise!

Another time my mum was over.  We went out for dinner and asked for tea afterwards.  They asked what type of tea, and my mum didn't know what to say!  She just said "normal tea".  I clarified it as "black tea", and that's what she always asks for now when she's over.

Recently I had breakfast in a restaurant and they asked if I wanted coffee.  I saw "coffee or tea" on the menu, so I asked for tea instead, assuming that if it was next to coffee it must be hot.  It wasn't, we ended up with two iced teas.

The next day we had breakfast in a different place, and again asked for tea.  They put loose tea leaves in a little metal diffuser thing and put it in a cup of warm water.  We tried to swish it around a bit, but ended up with lots of tea leaves floating in a cup of weak tea.

I was almost ready to give up, but I had some tea in a place in Maine recently, and it was great.  It came in a tea pot with the right amount of hot water, and a little jug a milk :-)