Basic Trope: A character orders food at a place where they don't sell that specific food.
- Straight: Alice orders spaghetti at a French restaurant.
- Exaggerated: Alice orders spaghetti at a hardware store.
- Downplayed:
- Alice orders spaghetti at a pizzeria, having gotten confused because spaghetti and pizza are both Italian. note
- Alice orders coq au vin and ratatouille at a French restaurant, which they do have, but orders a Coca-Cola for a drink when they only have wine.
- Justified:
- Alice does not know where spaghetti comes from.
- Alice needs glasses. note
- Alice, coasting on autopilot, didn't notice that Restaurant du Magnifique, has taken over the building that housed the recently defunct Pasta Belissimo.
- Inverted: Alice orders French food at a French restaurant, but they give her spaghetti for some reason.
- Inverted/Exaggerated: Alice hands her new glasses prescription to the waiter at the Italian restaurant next door to the optician.
- Subverted:
- Alice goes into a French restaurant and apparently orders spaghetti, but that was a slip of the tongue.
- Alice goes into a French restaurant and orders spaghetti, but it turns out that the restaurant is expanding its menu and does indeed serve spaghetti.
- Double Subverted: She meant to say lasagna.
- Parodied: Alice walks up to Lucy's psychiatry booth and orders multiple servings of chateaubriand and beef wellington, several cases of fine wines, and a dozen cheesecakes.
- Averted:
- Alice does not order food.
- Alice orders French food at the French restaurant, or Italian food at an Italian restaurant.
- Enforced: The creators want to show that Alice is ignorant and culturally insensitive to make a statement.
- Lampshaded: "We don't serve spaghetti here, because it's Italian and we're a French restaurant."
- Invoked: Bob tricks Alice into thinking the French restaurant is Italian.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The owners of the French restaurant has its entire menu on display and requires that everyone read the whole menu before entering.
- Discussed: "If I were to order the wrong food at a restaurant, what would the staff do?"
- Conversed: "Doesn't that character realise that spaghetti is Italian?"
- Implied: We don't see what Alice ordered, but we do hear Charles the waiter saying, "I think you got your cultural dishes mixed up."
- Deconstructed: Alice is on a date with Bob at a fancy French restaurant, and she orders sushi. She ends up embarrassing herself in front of Bob.
- Reconstructed: Alice decides to reread the restaurant's menu thoroughly to avoid repeating the same mistake.
- Played for Laughs: What that trope normally is by default.
- Played for Drama: Alice orders sushi at a French restaurant. When told that they don't have sushi, her sense of entitlement kicks in and she berates the staff and threatens to leave a bad review online.
- Played for Horror: Alice, a vampire, orders blood at a restaurant.
Back to Wrong Restaurant.