Through the Seasons

French Food

It’s world renown right?  Most of the food here has been wonderful but we have had a few surprises. 

At lunch in a cafe Jonathan ordered a hamburger.  The waiter asked if he wanted that cooked medium.  Huh?!  Jonathan requested medium well.  I looked over at his plate halfway through the meal and almost gagged.  Medium well in France is medium rare in America.  A burger – medium rare!?  Yikes. 

The next night we had dinner in a restaurant.  You can either order things a la carte or as a fixed menu of items where you choose one of three appetizers, one of three main dishes, and one of three desserts.  It costs less to order a fixed menu than selecting the items individually.  Our choices for the main dish were chicken, beef, or fish.  I couldn’t figure out how each was prepared but I prefer beef so I ordered that.  Big mistake!  Apparently I ordered a raw patty of ground beef.  I about died when she sat it down in front of me.  Jonathan touched it and said, “It’s cold.”  EEKS!

The thing about French service is that they bring one course out then completely disappear until you’re finished with that course and ready for the next.  So the odds of us finding our waitress weren’t good.  After waiting quite a while she made her way to a table near us so we called her over.  Then the fun began.

Jonathan tried his best to tell her that we didn’t understand that tartare means raw (you’ll remember that word forever now won’t you?) and that we want it “tres cuis” (well done – thanks to my phrasebook we knew how to say that – bad thing is that tartare wasn’t in my book).  She understood just enough to begin saying over and over “no cuis”!  I wanted to say, “Yes, I realize that.  No cuis, no eat.”  Finally we got our point across and she took the plate saying something like, “I will check to see if it’s possible.”  Uh oh.

Eventually a man who seemed to be a manager or something came out with my “tres cuis” burger and as he left I realized yet another mistake.  I forgot to ask for ketchup.  Doh!  I kept looking for someone, anyone to come back by but no one came and I didn’t want to make anymore of a scene than I already had so I ate my little beef patty with no condiment.  As long as it was cooked.  That had to happen or I was just going to go hungry.

(P.S.  The picture is of our entrees (appetizers) so, as you can see, the whole meal wasn’t a bust.  )