A bite by any other name!

By Rohan Swamy

Image credit: Dzenina Lukac on Pexels

My grandma likes to share stories of their arrival in Canada many decades ago and this is a little story about how different names for the same food in different parts of the world can trip people up.

She loved French fries when she was a little girl, she says. Not part of the traditional South Indian cuisine they had at home, it was a rare treat, and she absolutely loved dousing them with ketchup on the rare occasions they got to enjoy them at a restaurant.

Except that she knew them by another name. Finger chips.

When they moved to Canada, she says she was excited to discover food courts in malls on an outing with her neighbour who befriended her and took her under her wing.

On one such outing, they stopped for a bite to eat and she said she would order finger chips. Of course Betty had no idea what those were. Grandma pointed to the image on the board behind the counter, and learnt that they were called French fries in Canada!

When I giggled over her calling them finger chips, and wanted to know the reason behind what I thought was a funny name, she explained – as she had to Betty all those years ago – that it probably was a British thing and came from fish and chips.

Then she added with a laugh that I should have seen Betty’s face when she told her okra was called ladies fingers!