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I love dining out. Everything about it is pleasurable.

Somebody else buys and schleps the food to the kitchen. Somebody else’s eyes water chopping the onions. Somebody else stirs the risotto for 30 minutes while I sip pinot gris and play toe hockey with my husband under the table. Somebody else clears and washes the dishes. If only somebody else could absorb the calories from the crème brulée I inevitably have for dessert!

But lately, I’ve been disturbed by two restaurant trends: Chefs using ingredients I can’t identify without a Cordon Bleu translator -- my husband John calls it, “Pimp My Menu” -- and meals featuring ingredients I’m not sure should go together, even if they can.

When I go out, I don’t want caviar. Just something well prepared with ingredients that sound like they come from Planet Earth. Yet a menu survey of restaurants in our city unearthed some quizzical results. Unless you’re a food purveyor for a three-star Michelin restaurant, could you ID any of the following in a police line-up?

• chiogga beets
• seckel pears
• radish brunoise
• spinach pistou
• mashed yucca and calaloo in a piquant adobo
• gribiche
• paprika mojo
• cod brendade

Look, I’m not saying we should go back to eating liver and onions or Welsh rarebit. In fact, many early-20th century meals looked more like biopsy samples than entrees. But at least when they brought liver and onions to your table, you could tell what it was. Now? I can’t distinguish between a calaloo and a chiogga beet. For all I know, I’m downing a dish delivered to our table by mistake.

Trouble is, if you want to know what a “gribiche” or “brendade” is, you’ve gotta ask the waiter, which can bring a snippy side dish of attitude -- the “You’re mangling the pronunciation and you don’t know what it is?” eye roll, as if you’re asking him what “butter” is.

And have chefs completely lost their minds when it comes to combining foods? Clearly, some things are better left kept apart. Here’s five of them:

• violet mustard
• strawberry black pepper sorbet
• chile-infused chocolate torte
• ash rind goat’s milk cheese
• caramelized fennel mousse

I often imagine restaurant staffers peering out of the kitchen and laughing as diners ingest their bizarre combos (“No way! They’re actually eating the New Zealand fallow venison with the bat urine reduction?”).

So, a request to America’s chefs. I respect creativity. I know you’re trying to make a name for yourselves. But would it kill you to throw a simple grilled steak with a baked potato onto your indecipherable menus? I promise to give “cassava brioche” and “Maine flageolets” a shot if you do!