What the customers reakkt wanted…
What could have been an amusing story about translation confusion has instead left two women upset with a Stockholm restaurant that has an English menu, but staff members with a glitch in the language.
The women’s complaint, reported by Aftonbladet, says that one of them ordered hash brown potatores, known in Swedish as rarakor, and the waiter though she was asking for a hash brownie (shades of Alice B. Toklas) and ordered her out of the restaurant.
The woman, a 35-year-old tourist from Bulgaria, and a Swedish friend tried to explain, but say that the staff wouldn’t listen. Since tourism is a major source of income for Sweden, and especially restaurants in the Gamla Stan (Old Town) area where the incident happened, it got a lot of publicity.
The restaurant manager told Aftonbladet that “unfortunately the staff did not get that she meant ‘rarakor’…It was not our intention to be rude…we must now make sure that everybody on the team know what the words on the menu mean.” Yes.
More details in TheLocal.se Photo: Sahil Tiwarie
I would have thought the liberal Swedes would have been happy to serve her what they thought she had ordered…..