End Vowel Ommission in NJ Italian Restaurants

Over the last view years I have seen this trend in Italian Restaurants in the NJ area where I live to omit the end vowel of some ingredients and dishes. (And maybe it was always there and I just started to realize it recently). So I'm by now accustomed to hearing "Proscuitt" and "Mozzarell".
The waiter in a Milburn Italian place yesterday however took this concept to a whole new level. The "Rigaton Salsicc" where funny but it become ridiculous or hilarious (depending what your stance is towards lingustic creativity) when the tuna special was announced with "Broccol and mashed potat" (pronounced like "potate").
I'm not sure if our waiter was serious or just making fun of this trend. I was tempted to ask him about the "Penne Vodka" to see what he would have done with that. You certainly can save pronoucing a lot of vowels that way.
Anybody else having a funny story or an opinion on this?