Cyndi Himmelstiere on menu boards that have stopped using words most people recognise
I ordered a coffee last week and was asked, with complete sincerity, whether I wanted it “with or without the fermented element.” I did not know there was a fermented element on offer as a default. I said without, mostly out of self-preservation, and drank what I can only describe as a perfectly nice, entirely mysterious coffee.
The Menu As Performance Art
Shoreditch café menus have developed their own dialect over the past few years, one that assumes a level of insider knowledge I frankly don’t always have, despite having lived here for the better part of a decade. Terms appear and vanish with genuine speed. Last year it was “activated.” This year it’s apparently “fermented elements.” I have no idea what’s coming next, and I say that as someone whose entire job involves paying close attention to exactly this kind of neighbourhood shift.
There’s a real skill to ordering confidently in these places without actually understanding half the menu, a kind of performed fluency that half the neighbourhood, I suspect, is faking just as much as I am. Nobody wants to be the person who asks what something means. You just nod, order the safest-sounding option, and hope for the best.
A Genuine Barrier For Some, A Game For Others
I’ve heard from older residents and newer arrivals alike that the menu language can feel genuinely alienating, less an invitation than a small, deliberate test of belonging. Others treat it as a fun, low-stakes game, part of the specific charm of a neighbourhood that’s always had a taste for reinventing its own vocabulary every few years.
Coverage from Londonist has written about East London’s ever-shifting café culture extensively, documenting a pattern of linguistic reinvention that, honestly, shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
My Actual Advice
Just ask. Genuinely, every barista I’ve ever actually questioned about a mysterious menu term has been lovely about explaining it, no judgment at all. The performed confidence is mostly unnecessary. We’re all just quietly guessing our way through the fermented elements together, and honestly, that’s a perfectly fine way to order a coffee.
More from Cyndi Himmelstiere at her author page on The London Prat.
Related coverage can be found at Londonist.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
