I have a menu board in my house, and when my friends come to dinner, I use it.

Unfortunately, since I bought the rusty thing second-hand at a restaurant relic store on Atlantic Avenue, it comes with a frustratingly incomplete set of letters. (Letters that, incidentally, I had to soak in bleach for two whole days before I could bring myself to use at all. I’m no clean freak, but these were sticky with filth.)

Anyway, the erratic distribution of the letters drives me to all sorts of language-traversing liberty-taking when it comes to setting out the evening’s bill of fare. On the menu pictured, a shortage of Ps and Ys meant the latkes were neither “sweet potato” nor “yam”, but simply “sweet”. I did have lots of Bs and Ms, though, so I used the French words for baby apple to describe the teeny little apples I baked for dessert. And I omitted the garlic confit, balsamic vinegar teriyaki and green pea puree entirely.

Maybe more “New American” restaurants should be forced to convey their specials on dirty old boards with missing letters. Might be a nice exercise in dish-description discipline, at a time when we are told about the provenance of the scallions and the emotional baggage of the pig. Just a thought.

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