They come in different shapes, sizes and colours, of course. From the minimum scrap of paper to elaborate volumes rivalling the phonebook in size. There might be a handful of dishes on offer or several hundred.

In a way, a menu is a restaurant's face. If it looks shabby, you could well expect horrible food. Many curbside vendors and small noodle shops prove the exception with grimy leaflets that belie their excellent grub, but diners are more likely to be impressed with elaborate bills of fare, maybe even something bound in leather.

Asst Prof Dr Porntip Pukphasuk of Chulalongkorn University has made a study of Thai menus, and concludes that they're quite different from what you find in other countries. The key is in the breadth of the variations.

The Thai menu, she notes, might list dishes according to cooking method, as in kuay tiew kua and khao pad - stir-fried flat noodles and fried rice.

By the names of the dishes you also know what taste and colour to expect. There is kaeng daeng, red curry, and kaeng leueng, the yellow variety.

If you order kaeng phed, you know the curry is going to be hot and spicy. If you ask for the khai kaem, you can expect salty eggs.

If you're surprised by any of the above dishes, you're obviously not Thai or don't speak Thai, so you're going to need a translator.

Enter Asst Prof Sarapee Gaston, also of Chulalongkorn, who's been translating the names of Thai dishes for years. It's not as easy as it might seem, she says, because you have to know the historical and cultural context.

Often, she laments, restaurants proffer menus that are virtually unreadable. What the customer orders is not what the customer gets.

The basic Thai-cuisine ingredient woon sen, Sarapee points out, can be identified in English eight different ways: jelly noodle, cellophane noodle, mung-bean noodle, bean thread noodle, vermicelli, glass noodle, glass vermicelli and crystal noodle.

Which one, she is commonly asked, is best to use?

In French it's even trickier. Sarapee has no patience for cheveux d'ange, vermicelles choinois or vermicelles de soja, all of which are overtly misleading, if not dead wrong. Such terminology is used by Vietnamese and Cambodians living and working in restaurants in France.

In German, the noodle in question is glasnudeln, which makes straightforward sense, but the Italians have come up with fagiolini, which means "string beans" - nothing to do with the nature of this ingredient.

Spaniards, never at a loss for words, can choose among fideos de celofan, tallarines transparentes, tallarinese de crystal, vermicelli transparentes, cabello de angel or just plain transparentes.

In Portugal the translation falters again with massa transparente which, as Sarapee notes, doesn't mean "bean thread" at all.

Be grateful when you can just point at what you want and nod your head.

Cookman Redux

The Nation