The waiter - a boy, really, he couldn't have been more than 14 - came bursting through the door from the kitchen carrying a large steaming bowl and a chunk of bread. He was followed by what must have been the entire restaurant staff. They were all smiling excitedly. The other customers stopped eating and watched. He cleared his throat several times and, encouraged by the owner's wife, said to me in English, "Enjoy your donkey stew, Signore!" Wait, what donkey stew? Who ordered donkey stew? I had. That's why everyone was looking at me with such pride.

You'll want to avoid this and other embarrassing moments at restaurants in Spain, Italy, France and Portugal with Donkey Stew® menu assistant.

Foreign cuisine can be quite different from what we are familiar with. And some foreign dishes which you have eaten here may be quite different from how it is made traditionally in their country of origin. Many such dishes - or their ingredients - might not appear in restaurants geared to tourists, but they will appear on menus at smaller places where the locals eat. And they are often listed by their name as spoken in the local dialect.

Some items are listed on menus in a kind of "shorthand", such as referring to goat cheese simply as "goat". Others are referred to by the way they are made (eg, "guitar" - a traditional pasta type made with a tool that looks like a guitar) or by some special terra cotta pot traditionally used for cooking or aging (the locals know what's in the pot).

There may be no menu in English, your pocket dictionary may leave you scratching your head, and there may be no WiFi or cellular connection for your smartphone.

Donkey Stew® menu assistant does not require an Internet connection (except to download any updates), and it has over 75,000 individual entries and recognizes many thousands more. You don't need to tell it where you are; you simply type in what you see on the menu.

In addition to its large database, you'll find helpful hints and a "point-and-shoot" selection of images to assist you in getting the food or service you deserve.