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Wow, that's awesome, the only way it could be more surreal is if you had been holding the menu in front of you! "扒饭" isn't, on its own, an actual Chinese word.

Wow, that's awesome, the only way it could be more surreal is if you had been holding the menu in front of you! "扒饭" isn't, on its own, an actual Chinese word. The "扒" is basically a modifier that comes after a type of meat and indicates that it is a "steak" or "cutlet". So your menu item "美式杂扒饭" should translate as "American-style" (美式) "mixed grill" (杂扒) "on rice" (饭)... but the machine translation is getting the word boundaries wrong and translating it as "American-style" (美式) "mixed" (杂) "larrysalibra" (扒饭). Fascinating.

larrysalibra 9y ago
The really crazy thing is how I found out about it. A friend in Austin's friend who I don't know was apparently at that restaurant in Shenzhen, ~10 miles north of where I live in Hong Kong, traveling on business, saw the menu, recognized my name from somewhere, told the friend in Austin who then passed on the message and pic to me. Small world. China's a big country - makes me wonder what other menus I'm on!