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Restaurant slang is informed by the need to convey ideas
quickly – e.g. explaining to someone, rapidly, that they need to
stay put or they will have boiling water spilled all over them – as
well as the fact that the industry is more multilingual than most, so
non-standard English tends to thrive. Particularly in the US
restaurant industry, a lot of slang is a reflection of the fusion of
Spanish and English that is used in kitchens. The high-pressure
environment of professional catering also comes through, as well
as the disdain in which diners are held by chefs when their order
reflects poor taste.
1. Dying on the pass: The ‘pass’ is the area where hot food
is placed to stay warm before the waiting staff come to pick it up –
and if the food there is ‘dying’, then it needs to be collected as
soon as possible, because it’s in the process of becoming inedible.
2. Cremated: How chefs refer to steaks and burgers that
they consider overcooked. An order for a steak to be ‘well done’ is
usually translated by chefs as ‘cremated’.
3. Still mooing: The opposite of ‘cremated’, which is likely
to garner more respect from the chef.
4. In the weeds: This is what some restaurant employees
will suggest is the perennial state of affairs: when there are too
many demanding customers, too many orders and too little time to
serve everyone in.
5. Dine and dash: Another one that’s seeped into general
usage, to ‘dine and dash’ is not hurrying to get to the theatre in
time after your meal; it’s eating and then running off without
paying the bill.
The nomenclature (from the Latin nomenclatura-list, a list
of names) refers to a specific field of knowledge. This term
appeared in the French language of the 18th century. It became
popular in science due to the classification of plants by the
Swedish botanist Linnaeus, Thus it was used in some languages
(e.g. Italian) totally ousting the concept terminology. The border
line between notions “terminology” and “nomenclature” was

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