Rob and I love to go out for dinner, but food is rarely the highlight of the meal. Usually, the high point is the process of copy editing the menu. It’s rare (virtually unheard of!) for us to dine at a restaurant that is typo-free, grammatically correct and typographically consistent. Don’t restauranteurs realize that the “Saltspring Island Goat Cheese” (capitalized) doesn’t taste as good when it’s accompanied by “mediterranean style black olive spread” (lowercase and missing a hyphen)?
We’ve experimented with tech options for sharing this food+editing passion with friends, testing out various iphone apps that let you annotate photos on the fly. In theory, it should be possible to snap a menu, copy edit it, and share the results online. But even I, an avid eat-and-tweeter, find that process cumbersome and intrusive.
So I’ve thought of a whole other way to socialize the eat-and-edit experience: a supper club for copy-editing foodies. I’m thinking it could involve a group of grammar- and spelling- and food-obsessed friends, gathering monthly to eat at a new restaurant and mark up its menu. And just to keep things interesting — and ensure really vicious arguments about where to draw the line between style and correctness — we could say that the person who finds the largest number of errors eats for free.
Who’s in?
This is a great idea- I’m in…
I’m in.
I love this idea.
Count me in. It’s not “defacing” if you make something better, right? Because I always pack a Sharpie and red pen.
@alex Wow! There is no ‘N’ in restaurateur http://bit.ly/dZmt5l
I noticed this as well, Steve.
This is fantastic. Lots of InstaGram possibilities.