It was in the early nineteen eighties and I was working in Ballinakill House in Waterford.
Perhaps it would be fair to point out that at this stage Ireland was at the very begining of what has been a revolution in how we saw food. Restaurants who were serious about food and neither connected to a hotel or Chinese were a novelty. “Catering ” as it was called was of the catering pack variety and came mainly from packets, freezers or tins.
Sue, who was the waitress at the time in Ballinakill and a good Protestant with an accent to match, came back from the table where she had taken an order, somewhat flustered.
It turned out she had been lost in translation.
She explained that the man at the table had asked her if the soup was “Tin Soup”.
She rose herself to her full height and explained that the soups, and indeed all else served in the restaurant, were carefully made by the French trained chef(me) with his own hands from scratch, using local farmed ingredients each known to him personally and not only did he never use a tinned product but he didn’t even have a tin opener in the kitchen,(true).
The orderer (a local man) also rose himself to his full height and expostulated that he “Only wanted to know if the soup was tick or tin!”