Taking liberties with menu descriptions is not just a U.S. phenomenon. A recent story from the UK reveled that restaurants on the other side of the Atlantic have been misleading diners with less-than-truthful descriptions of menu items. Here aresome examples:

• home-made tart actually from a national wholesaler
• home-made soup from a dry soup mix
• fire-roasted vegetables baked in an oven
• free-range eggs were not

And not to be left out, seafood was misrepresented as well:

• fresh mussels and fresh tuna steak were actually frozen
• battered cod or haddock was Pollack, whiting, pangasius

This quote from Jim Potts, Lancashire’s chief trading standards officer, says it all: people had the right to expect that the meals they buy are genuinely described on the menus and price lists. And the investigation didnt require any type of high-tech DNA testing to unearth the fraud. A simple matching up of invoices and ingredients in the store room/cooler/freezer to the menu description was all it took.