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French to English translations [PRO] Marketing - Cooking / Culinary / Restaurant website
French term or phrase:incontournable
Help! I've been racking my brains for ages on this one...
I have a heading on a restaurant website « Les Incontournables » where they list, not by any means all of their menu items, but just some key dishes which are to some extent specialities of the house, or reflect its style. One might regard them as being central or core elements of its targetting.
Now clearly, most of the common solutions (many of which do of course appear in the KudoZ glossary) are out of the question: 'inevitable / inescapable' would be quite out of the question (prawn cocktail — again?!)
Likewise 'unmissable' somehow seems to... miss the mark!
And all the 'must-haves' etc. seem to me to fall flat — 'must-eats'?
I did toy with 'essentials', but don't somehow feel this is quite right... but am prepared to reconsider...
The idea I've clung onto for the moment is "Not to be missed...", but it doesn't really quite sit comfortably; at the same time, I'm reluctant to go for a more staid 'key dishes' and I think 'speciality' is too narrow, especially as some of the dishes on the list are themselves referred to as 'our speciality'; likewise, one can't really use 'the classics', since many of these dishes are (relatively!) original and could hardly be described as classics.
Anyone feeling gastronomically inspired this morning...?
Thanks a lot, Lara! This is what I went with in the end, it fits my style and register perfectly, and is non-comittal enough to cover all bases! 3 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
I just wanted to say a big thank-you to everyone for your help on this one. You all came up with ideas that hadn't occurred to me, proving once again the value of this kind of brainstorming.
I think all the suggestions here could have worked in some circumstances, but have chosen the one that best fitted my specific context (in the not-unexpected total absence of clarification from the customer!)
Thanks again to the good ol' KudoZ team for coming to my rescue!
because, for me, incontournables are those firm favourites that no menu can afford to be without. On menus I've seen, albeit for a different category of restaurant (!), they have seasonal dishes, etc, etc. and, at the end, the good old classic favourites that everybody is supposed to love and are a fallback for those not tempted by the latest whims
This is not quite the kind of restaurant where the menu changes every day, and they are more likely to have 'dish of the financial year', I'd think!
AFAIK, the 'carte' heading is likely to have just a button to download a PDF version of their place-mat menu (get the picture?), whereas the 'incontournables' gives an actual list of dishes — quite a complete menu in itself — which I am assuming are simply the 'core' menu that probably won't be changed (ever?); but all this is supposition on my part, and so far the customer hasn't got back to me...
I've seen menus with "les plats classiques", "les plats traditionnels", "les spécialités du jour", etc. but not just with carte and incontournable. Do you know what comes under these different headings or is that still a closed book?
The main heading is 'La Carte', and under that are just two sub-headings, 'la carte' and 'les incontournables' — I don't know for sure, but I believe the 'la carte' will display the full restaurant menu as it changes from time to time, whereas 'les incontournables' will probably carry the 'core' dishes which perhaps don't change, or at least, a list from which any current core dishes may be drawn. The trouble is, I only have a 'snapshot' of the situation today, I don't really know how the website is intended to be used in the future.
I think your own last suggestion of "Don't miss our..." would work well, especially with the extra button element - as long as the restaurant is not a multi-starred michelin or similar, where the tone might be a bit casual...
I should have said that not only is this a page header, but it also appears on the button to take you there...
I'm toying with the idea of "Don't miss our..." — I've used the ellipsis ploy on other buttons, and I think it's quite a nice technique for arousing people's curiosity and encouraging them to click the button. Once on the page, of course, they'll find out soon enough what it's all about; and of course, we do know that it's a restaurant, so they won't be expecting it to be "shampoo, cut, and blow-dry" ☺
"dishes that will not necessarily always appear on the menu" seems to change things a bit to my mind. Perhaps it should be something vaguer like "reflections of our style". Still thinking
Although neither of these would actually be viable solutions, I think the general idea is really "good old standbys" and "the familiar things you expect to see on our menu" — though I repeat, in most instances, these are far from being 'classic' dishes. I feel the idea of 'incontournable' here is at least partly "things that really have to be present on any self-respecting menu".
As I mentioned earlier under Anne's answer, the problem is that only a subset of the list are literally referred to as 'specialities of the house'. It's so hard to explain — these are kind of lots of dishes that will not necessarily always appear on the menu, but which give an idea of the sort of things to expect when you come to this restaurant...
Actually don't see anything wrong with specialities, as in "specialities of the house"
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Answers
7 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +4
Our signature dishes
Explanation: Or is that too celebrity cheffy!
Anne Greaves United Kingdom Local time: 16:38 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 4
Notes to answerer
Asker: Thanks, Anne! No, not at all, the tone and register would be quite appropriate; however, as I said above, the list is a little too long for that to be really true, and only a subset of the list are literally referred to as 'specialities of the house'. It's so hard to explain — these are kind of lots of dishes that will not necessarily always appear on the menu, but which give an idea of the sort of things to expect when you come to this restaurant...
Asker: Thanks a lot, Anne! This is definitely an excellent solution in many situations, but in the end, not the one I decided to use in my particular instance.
peer agreement (net): +4