茶餐廳 Menu Lingo (only appli. in Hong Kong)
Thanks to @blood-bla-bla for recommending me that Cha Chan Teng 茶餐廳 Song, I finally got my fingers (and brain) motivated enough to find out more about 茶餐廳 menu items and I found this picture! ↑
Though I doubt I'll ever get to use or hear some of these terms outside of HK drama series, it's fun to peruse and try to decipher how some of these lingo (some are really funny!) came about! (^^)
I can guess some of the following for e.g. ↓
“29” — 熱鮮奶 (Hot Fresh Milk) [g. “2” and “hot” sound similar, and “9 (nine)” sounds like “milk” in Cantonese]
“OT” — 熱檸檬茶 (Hot Lemon Tea) [g. “O” for “zero” sounds like one half of the character for “lemon” and “T” for (obviously) “tea”]
“2O6” — 熱檸樂 (Hot Cola w/ lemon) [g. “2” “O” (zero) and “6” sound like “hot”, “lemon” and “cola” in Cantonese respectively]
“冬T” (lit. “winter T”) — 凍奶茶 (Cold Milk Tea) [g. 冬 “winter” and 凍 “chilled or cold” sound phonetically the same]
“涼茶” (lit. “cool tea”) — 凍奶茶 (Cold Milk Tea) [g. this is just to be cheeky. Because outside of 茶餐廳, “涼茶” is a very different kind of tea! — more like a herbal tea believed to have a “cooling” effect, and I don't think actual 涼茶 is sold at 茶餐廳?]
“乃T” — 奶茶 (Milk Tea) [g. “乃” also sounds like the word for “milk”]
“孖T” (lit. "twin T”) — 兩杯奶茶 (2 cups of Milk Tea)
“齋啡” (lit. “vegetarian coffee”) — 不加糖奶 (Coffee w/o sugar & milk)
“飛沙走奶” (“sand flew and milk gone/left”) — 不要糖不要奶 (No sugar, no milk) [g. “沙” comes from “沙糖” which means “granular sugar” and this whole term appli. to all drinks that could have these]
“汪阿姐” (“Big Sister Wang”) — 熱咖啡 (Hot Coffee) [g. reference to Liza Wang, well-known HK personality, because she had a popular song called “Hot Coffee” in the '70s (I think), and I also think only people of a certain generation would use this term? I've only heard of this being used once in a drama series (from 20+ years ago now), where an older character used “汪明荃” (Liza Wang's full name) to mean he wanted hot coffee] ↓
"雪櫃” (lit. “Refrigerator”) — 樽裝可樂 (Bottled Cola) [g. because bottled cola is a standard (or used to be — not sure if bottled cola can be found widely now) found in all fridges in 茶餐廳, so it's a given “refrigerator” means that]
“和尚跳海” (“monk jumps into the ocean”) — 滾水蛋 (Half-boiled egg) [g. because (obviously?) a monk's bald head resembles an egg and “jumping into the ocean” refers to the “egg being dunked in boiling water”]
“靚仔” (“handsome/pretty boy”) — 白飯 (White Rice) [g. because fresh steamed white rice has a glistening, “pretty” sheen to it, while 仔 (boy) sounds like 滯, which means to feel stuffed or full, and rice is seen in most Asian cultures as a main staple, to fill up on]
“靚女” (“pretty girl”) — 白粥 (Plain Congee) [g. since there's a “pretty boy”, to add a “pretty girl” to the menu seems an obvious step, and congee is seen as a “lighter” dish than rice, mirroring people's common perception that girls are “lighter” than boys]
↑ are just some examples, I'm too lazy to list down every item and try to decipher every one, some of which I'll never understand as a non-local anyway.
