Food Word Play Puns

The would-be mentor insisted on going to a seafood restaurant and then he ordered his favorite meal for the both of them. When the hard working, fresh-out-of-journalism-school grad asked the veteran newshound how he always managed to get witty phrases from the Prime Ministers and Presidents he interviewed, a sly smile swam across his face.

Intrigued, she watched intently while he reached for his wallet then removed a €5 note. Holding it toward her face over the table, she was surprised when the greying beat writer dropped the money directly on her uneaten dinner and held an index finger to his closed lips.

As they both looked down at the seafood platter, his paper Euro was suddenly sucked under the rings of fried calamari until it disappeared from sight. After what sounded like a stand-up comedian clearing his throat, a male voice with an Eastern European accent clearly rose out of her food. It said, "Trump asked for dirt on Biden so I sent him some good Ukrainian topsoil."

As the gobsmacked gal with mouth agape slowly raised her eyes to her grinning dinner guest's face, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "squid pro quote".

Required Explanation: "squid pro quote" is a play on words for the saying "quid pro quo", a Latin phrase meaning "something for something". In the news at the time of this posting a tremendous amount of discussion is being circulated about whether or not US president Trump dangled a quid pro quo offer in front of Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The deal had nothing to do with seafood however, so that was just a red herring. It should also be noted that Mr. Zelensky, before diving into politics, was a stand-up comedian.

Eating it was pretty grueling.

We went out to eat at a Cuban place and my mother had ordered some food with a side of tostones (a plantain dish). She complained that they had too much garlic to which I made a joke:

"Yeah, as soon as you bit into it, you tatsed the garlic and were like , '¡Ajo!'"

(¡Ajo! is a Spanish exclamatory similar to "ooooooh" or "oh my goodnes." It doesn't have a direct English equivalent but that's what it means. The Spanish word for garlic also happens to be ajo, so I made a pun playing off the dual meaning of the word. Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. )