23 February, 2008

Just a bit of sophomoric humor

Here's a sign that's cropped up in the past decade or so - it's for a French crepe stand. This is a new-ish concept (i.e. post-my initial arrival to the country in 1990) in Israel - some batter is poured onto a hot plate kind of thing, and delicately developed into a very thin pancake, which can then be topped with chocolate sauce, dulce de leche, or the like.

Unfortunately for those in the business, "crepe" does not yet apparently have its own formal Hebrew word. Therefore, the signs have little choice but to transliterate the crepe, rather than translate. This is really only problematic for crass Americans like myself; being as we can only see the consonants in the word, the French c-r-p kind of stands out blatantly with a less pancakey (and far less appetizing) meaning.


I'm sure it's delicious nonetheless. Bon appetit!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, crepe!

Anonymous said...

On my first visit to Israel in 1979 as a sophomoric 16 year old, toilet paper was sold as crepe paper. Apt, no?