Restuar* (for Restaur*)

I was enjoying a meal with some friends at a local Greek eatery called Ali Baba the other night and found myself charmed by the somewhat hyperbolic and H-happy slogan printed on its menu: "House of Healthy Fresh Homemade Deliciousness." I've been there a couple of times now and have so far eaten, sampled, or considered ordering the iskender, the durum, the guvech, the kabob, and a cold platter of assorted globs of mystery "deliciousness"—including, of course, the traditional stuffed grape leaves. (A buddy of mine used to date a Greek woman for whom he employed the pet name dolmadaki mon, meaning "my little stuffed grape leaf.") I also had the traditional yogurt drink known as ayran, which might be a good typo candidate for Aryan, so stay tuned. (A search just now on Aryan + Ayran returned a single hit in OhioLINK and 16 in WorldCat.) Our typo du jour was found ten times in the former database and 315 times in the latter one. Due to the way the word restaurant is often pronounced, I'm always a bit surprised not to find any cases of Restarau* in the smaller of the two catalogs, although it did come up 32 times in the larger one today. Another spelling-related note here: a person who owns or runs a restaurant is called a restaurateur. The variant "restauranteur" (with an n) is widely if arguably considered incorrect.

(Greek salad, horiatiki salata, at Psaropoulo restaurant in Hydra, Greece, September 2007, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid