Trivia hound Ben Schott has a new piece in the New York Times explicating some of the more family friendly terms and codes used in the restaurant trade.

The list dwells on lingo specific to certain restaurants, and my personal favorites on the list include Union Square Cafe's "with a story," meaning lots of conditions on the order, the understandably unattributed "artichoke," an attractive female diner, and The Dutch's indiscriminate use of "the guy" for any object, as in "take the guy (the broom) and sweep the floor."*

As Schott notes in the article, there are plenty of terms left out for decency's sake. I'm sure Eilis, our woman on the inside, can fill in some of the more colorful terms, but the defunct Server not Slave (a spiritual successor to the equally defunct and amazing bitterwaitress.com message board) has an additional, and surprisingly expletive-free rundown of general terms as well.

*That last one reminds me of the scene in Dersu Uzala where the titular character, a Siberian animist, variously describes the universe in personal terms: a whistling teapot is "a noisy man," while the sun is "a very powerful man."