According to the patrons of Roy’s Bistro in Cranston, the establishment recently labeled a takeout order of Cobb salad with an intricate series of cryptic runes decipherable only to high-ranking restaurant staff. “Look, we’re a very busy restaurant,” said owner Roy Gershberg, referencing the mysterious symbols that baffle those who pick up his all-American fare for takeout. “Rather than writing out ‘Cobb salad,’ we have a streamlined system that makes things much easier. The two carats stand for lettuce, the circle with an X through it means ‘no blue cheese’ and the upside down triangle with the serpent means ‘hold the salami.’ When people are dining with friends, we want them to know whose food is whose, so we label it with this handy system!” At press time, Gershberg was scanning and uploading PDFs of an 800-page cipher to the Roy’s Bistro website.

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