App: Italian Menu Decoder

[Pauline]

The travel guidebook authors Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls have an APP to help travelers figure out Italian Menus!

Italian Menu Decoder for iPhone and iPad $4.99

I bought it and downloaded it to my iPad and it has a wealth of information. You can filter by region (to see food terms used in Sicily, for example) or by type of food (antipasti, pizzas, etc.) or search for a term. It has over 7,000 words, including dialect words and local dishes from every region of Italy.

Dana joined these forums and told us about the app and their future guidebook publications plans in a thread on the Arrivals forum.

 

[Kathy (Trekcapri)]

Hi Pauline, I just downloaded this app and wow it is awesome! This app looks comprehensive, well written and very organized and I love the filters and how they have photos, maps of the regions. A must have app not only for those traveling to Italy but who love Italian food. I can see it being useful for me even at home or whenever I'm at a Italian restaurant and don't understand certain terminology or ingredient. It also has a really nice interactive feature to post comments and ask questions.

Thank you so much for the tip.

 

[italian excursion]

Fantastic! I will have to add this to my phone, too. Thanks for the information!

Ciao,
Cheryl
www.italianexcursion.com

 

[PokeyMindy]

I'll definitely check it out!! Thanks so much!

 

[PokeyMindy]

I just put the Italian Menu Decoder onto my IPadMini. It looks fantastic!! Although I think I understand most words on a menu, this will be very helpful. Grazie!

 

[Roz]

Love the Menu Decoder, too. Also, as I posted on that other thread Pauline mentioned, Dana and Michael's ebook, The Traveller's Guide to Hell, is free right now -- both for Kindle, as linked above, and on iBooks. It may not be a destination on your list -- but it is very funny and a good read.

 

[Heidi]

Italian Menu Decoder for iPhone and iPad $4.99

I bought it and downloaded it to my iPad and it has a wealth of information. You can filter by region (to see food terms used in Sicily, for example) or by type of food (antipasti, pizzas, etc.) or search for a term. It has over 7,000 words, including dialect words and local dishes from every region of Italy.

I downloaded Dana & Michael's Italian Menu Decoder, also, when it was mentioned on Dana's arrival thread. I've only just now had the time to play with it ~ Wow! It's an impressive tool with remarkable content. It's so much more than just a menu decoder! The definitions of terms, historical background, regional filters, grammar, pronunciations, photos, etc.
~ that tiger on the al dente page has serious gum disease but I won't soon forget 'to the teeth'! ~ all come together to provide the best menu reader/decoder I've ever come across!

Can't wait to use it in May! Thanks!

 

[Dana]

Pauline, Kathy, Cheryl, Pokey, Roz and Heidi: grazie mille for buying the app! Please do let us know if we missed anything—the interactive feature makes it really easy for us to make changes.

And Roz, thanks so much for the kind words about our guide to Hell. If you ever feel inclined to write a little review on Amazon or iTunes, we'd really appreciate it! Michael and I are still trying to get our heads around all this newfangled social media stuff, and usually it just makes them ache.

 

[Roz]

Pauline, Kathy, Cheryl, Pokey, Roz and Heidi: grazie mille for buying the app! Please do let us know if we missed anything—the interactive feature makes it really easy for us to make changes.

Well, I don't know if this is too totally obscure. The other night we were watching an Italian movie about Paolo Borsellino, the Sicilian judge who was killed by the Mafia. At the beginning, he goes to the fish market where he is trying to find something called "zoccoli di mulo". It wasn't translated in the subtitles, and I guess whatever it is, it's on some kind of restricted list since the vendors really weren't supposed to sell it to him.

When I googled it, all I got were links to shoes. I know it's obviously some kind of seafood, and I'm only curious if you have any idea exactly what it is. But from the way Borsellino has to buy it "under the table" I'm guessing it probably wouldn't show up on a menu, so most likely wouldn't even belong in your app.

 

[Dana]

Very interesting—and mysterious. I googled it in Italian, and found it mentioned on two little forums, both asking what it was because they had seen it in that very same Borsellino film, but no one knew either. We need to find a Palermitano to ask to see if the screen writer made it up.

 

[Pauline]

I wrote a review for iTunes and one on the app. Let's help get the word out about this great app.

 

[Dana]

Grazie mille, Pauline! Reviews really really help (well, as long as they're good ones!)

 

[Doru]

There is an Android version of the Italian Menu Decoder, which I purchased three days ago. While less user friendly than the iPhone version, in the sense that it does not provide Search and Alphabetical Sort, it is still a great resource, all good for our trip to Rome, three weeks in April-May.

I corresponded with Dana on the software, following which I sent some notes to the publisher, Sutro Media. I received a reply today (which I will forward on to Dana tomorrow: most of the day today we didn't have Internet...); the reply from Sutro Media recognised the problem but made no commitment to fix it. Too bad. Not so easy to scroll through almost 2000 entries in order to get to zabaglione...

 

[jonathan]

Not so easy to scroll through almost 2000 entries in order to get to zabaglione...

All the more fortunate then, Doru, that I'm sure you're already comfortably familiar with what zabaglione is...

 

[Doru]

OK, "zampina", which I would really order if I could get all the way down to "z"...

 

[Pauline]

Anyone want to let me in on the language joke? I google zabaglione and get Italian Custard. Perhaps that is the joke - Doru knows his desserts! Zampina looks like meat - something I have no use for.

For what it's worth, the current last word in the Italian Menu Decoder app is ... (waiting while the latest version is downloading onto my iPad) ... Zuppa Inglese - how appropriate!

Zabaglione - custard with sweet wine
Zampini - pork sausage
Zuppa Inglese - English Soup, a layered dessert

 

[Doru]

Anyone want to let me in on the language joke?

Frankly, the first word starting with "z" that came to my mind whaen I wrote that post was zabaglione. Jonathan knows that I have a sweet tooth... So I went back to look up a "z" word that is less familiar. Zampina also works for me because I also like sausages, and it was a word I didn't meet before. So this is the mystery...

 

[Pauline]

We used the app today to look up "sfizi" - an small dish, like an "amuse-bouche" or a tapa. It was a sign on a pizzeria.

 

[italian excursion]

Cool, Pauline. Sounds like you guys are enjoying your trip immensely. Now I am curious about other apps for Italy….will start a new thread!

Ciao,
Cheryl
www.italianexcursion.com

 

[Roz]

Dana, in case you are reading this, I just tried to open the Italian Menu Decoder on my iPad Mini (running iOS 7.1) and it keeps crashing. It has worked in the past, but I haven't tried to use it for a while. Today I wanted to check it out because we are going to Italy soon, but I could not get it to load. As soon as I open it, it quits. I tried uninstalling it and downloading it again, then restarting the iPad, but it still doesn't work. Is this a problem you are aware of?

I also have it on my iPhone, which is still running iOS 6, and it works fine on there.