Washington, Nov 27 (IANS) It was not just a gatecrashing couple that marred President Barack Obama’s first state dinner Tuesday night in honour of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The New York Times found fault with the menu too - literally.
The special dinner menu - a lavish melange of Indian and American favourites as well as several excellent wines - was rife with typos, the influential daily said in its The Politics and Government blog.

The second course of the evening was paired, for example, with a delicious 2006 Brooks Riesling, which, the menu noted, was bottled in “Wilamette Valley, Oregon”. According to the Times, the proper spelling is, “Willamette Valley”.

For their third course, the 320 guests were offered a dish that, according to the menu, included potato dumplings with tomato chutney and “chick peas”, which should in fact have been “chickpeas”, it said.

That course, the menu noted, was paired with an excellent red wine, a “2007 Granache” from Beckmen Vineyards. The correct spelling of the popular varietal, one of the most widely planted types of red grape in the world, is actually “Grenache” with only one “a” not two.

The last bottle of the night was equally impressive, a sparkling chardonnay from Virginia. It was listed as a “Thibaut Janisson Brut”, missing a hyphen between the first two words.

And the dessert included, according to the menu, passion fruit and vanilla “Gelees”, the French word for “gelled”, which, when written correctly, includes an acute accent on the second “e”, the Times said.