TOURISTS!!!

Back in Oxford, England, we were ordering dinner in a pub and asked the busboy what Yorkshire pudding was. He was classic UK: all forehead, ill skin and snaggled teeth. He looked at us with a mix of shock and grief. "Yorkshire pudding? You don't know what a Yorkshire pudding is?"
"Is it like a biscuit?"
"No, it's not a biscuit! It's a... a pudding. Right, you know your Sunday roast."
I did not.
"You've never had a Sunday roast?!"
B volunteered that she had.
"Right then. So in your Sunday roast you've got your meat, you've got your veg, you've got you mash... and you've got your Yorkshire pudding!"
But what is it?
He'd had enough. "Ask your server girl. I just fetch the dishes."

One month later and we had the same impact on a poor Indian man. We often get confused by the menus, not recognizing words, mixing up pakora and paratha. Well B is asking about various dishes and the man is doing his best to describe them--a difficult thing to do sometimes even when you both speak English (see above). Well B asks about some local dish and he looks relieved. "Ah, yes, this is a kind of dhal." In her defense, B does know what dhal is--a lentils, the most basic form of Indian food above rice--but at this moment she doesn't understand and asks, "Dhal? What is that?" The same aggrieved look we saw in Oxford. "You don't know dhal?" the man says. His shoulders sag. What's the use?