Saw a mention of "Thief juice: it's a mouth crime" in the Leverage tag and it sparked a glorious thought:
Brewpub menu using con names
A fair number of them look like straight-forward descriptions, nothing notable except perhaps the unusual inclusion of "the" before all of them, e.g., The Cuban Sandwich, The Cherry Pie, and The Apple Pie (most customers don't understand why the apple pie crust vents/decorations sometimes resemble life preservers, but it certainly doesn't occur to them to connect it to the very literal name).
Things turn significantly more confusing for most patrons with other menu items. Customers familiar enough with con-artist lingo recognize some of the established con names enough to figure out the naming theme, and some of them can guess at associations between some of the food and their namesake cons, but for the most part it's a mystery.
"The Fiddle Game" is Eliot's chili, at Parker's insistence. Hardison was initially a little concerned, since the "fiddle" is supposed to be an overvalued item that is actually essentially worthless, and, Parker, maybe we shouldn't be applying that to any of Eliot's food? But after Eliot gruffly cut him off and tried to pretend he wasn't a little choked up about it, Hardison decided not to stand in the way of Parker insights. (And he supposed she had technically named the chili after the con, not the fiddle itself, and the con was solid. A classic.)
No one on staff quite understands the private joke between the owners and head chef about using horsemeat in "The Lost Heir" burger--they all know it's actually bison.
And, finally, one of the most baffling to their clientele is also one of Eliot's few suggestions of non-literal con names for food, and an ongoing good-natured argument between Eliot and Hardison: Splitting a sandwich between two people with sides of soup or salad is "The Vegas Wake-Up Call." (It's like the Cuban Sandwich, but "the boyfriend shows up").
(BTW, for anyone else needing to reference Leverage con names, @glen-reeder compiled a list.)
op's tags: #i just think this is one of the few menu naming themes that parker and hardison could talk eliot into.#he attempted to make the opsec argument about not publicly highlighting their con-artist knowledge#but he is not immune to the fun of matching con names to food (or to how excited the other two are about the game).
