Besides, you are basically saying either ""cheese fries" is back on the menu or "cheese fries are back on the menu". Of course verbally there is little difference, but in writing I think the first is sloppy at best.
there's a difference between what's technically/legally correct and what's generally accepted. as i've already said, most people wouldn't care about the difference a great deal (or would think the "are" version is correct), and thus you can use either without a fuss
I'm sloppy a lot verbally. I'm also sloppy in informal writing. Being sloppy is a great way to save valuable time you can then waste on video games, like the combat sites in EVE I just did for no loot and no escalation. Should have opened the fortune cookie before that.
Actually Japanese, but even if it were an US invention, there are some nice things from the US. Chocolate chip cookies, Johnny Cash, Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman ...
maybe cheese fries is back on the menu is correct if you consider cheese fries not to be multiples cheese fries but a menu item, menu item is/are back on the menu. in this case is would indeed be superior.
We should just make every word like fish, used for both singular and plural. That context is usually given by the rest of the sentence anyway.
Chinese and a number of other East Asian languages are like this. Which is why Chinese people speaking English often sounds like they are stupid - it's because words like "a" and "the" aren't part of the language they first learned, and things like tenses and plurality are defined by other words, rather than modified variants of words.
