This article offers a comparative analysis of English and Uzbek food names from functional-semantic, pragmatic, and linguocultural perspectives. Against the backdrop of intensified intercultural communication, it examines how food lexemes determinate cultural knowledge about meal structure (breakfast, lunch), product typology, seasonality, dietary norms, and social practices. Drawing on frame-based terminology and a broad review of scholarship, the study illustrates cross-linguistic patterns and asymmetries through examples from English (toast, marmite, porridge, baked beans) and Uzbek cuisine (tandoor bread, cream, plov, samsa, shashlik). It highlights how religious prescriptions (halal/haram), ecology, and historical traditions shape national gastronomic worldviews and how food names function as cultural symbols in discourse, phraseology, and literature. The translation of culturally marked culinary items between English and Uzbek is analyzed in terms of strategies—borrowing, adaptation, descriptive translation, and menu-specific solutions—aimed at preserving both referential accuracy and pragmatic effect. The findings underscore the need for principled approaches to bilingual lexicography and to the translation of menus and recipes, and they contribute to a deeper understanding of how food terminology mediates identity, values, and communicative practice in both languages.