À la Carte – SoCS – Forty, c'est Fantastique !

Today’s prompt from Linda was a bit more complex than usual, but I couldn’t resist! Here’s the prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “point.” Open a book on your lap, close your eyes, and put your finger on the page. Whatever you land on, whether it be a word, a phrase, or a sentence, write about it. Enjoy!

As I am sitting at my desk, the bookshelf directly to my right and therefore the one most easily reached if I randomly reach out my right hand, is the “French” shelf. (are you shocked?) I landed on the section of “French travel books” and pulled out the 2016 Michelin Guide for France. Yummy!

I opened the book as instructed and closed my eyes. The word I landed on was carte. This is the French work for “menu.” In French the “menu” actually refers to the prix fixe menu. In the US we don’t find this too often, but I like the concept: for a fixed price you can choose from several dishes, for 2 or 3 courses. It’s usually either entrée-plat or plat-dessert. In English, for whatever reason, we call the plat principal or main dish, the “entree.” In French entrée means what we call the “starter” or “appetizer” here. It really doesn’t make any sense! Since the French verb entrer means “to enter,” it only makes sense that the entrée would be the starter, but language is funny that way.

But returning to the carte. This word refers to what we in the US call the “menu,” which is perfectly logical because if you do not choose the prix fixe menu then you can order à la carte.

Now I would like to take a moment to talk about la carte. There are many French restaurants which offer one in both French and English. In my experience, most of them, seeing your tourist horns sticking out, will ask if you’d like to see the menu in English. Some of them will just assume you want to have the English one, which does annoy me a smidge since I work so hard to learn French. I usually get over it, because they are trying to be accommodating. Sometimes, however, I do resent it. And sometimes I think that when I retire I would like to go to France and get a job helping these guys translate the menus. Desolée, my dear well-meaning French restaurant owners, but Google translate is still not as good as a human being with a little bit of language skill.

Je pense qu’il y a quelques restaurants en France qui ont besoin d’aide pour traduiser leur cartes… When we were in Paris last month we went to one restaurant where they gave us English menus and refused to speak French with me no matter how I insisted. The English menu had a dish called, “fish over backed.” After trying for a little bit to figure out what this fish was served over, (was “backed” a type of sauce? Vegetable? Pasta, perhaps? Who knew?) I politely asked the serveur, en français, qu’est-ce que c’était. He had a long discussion with another server and finally I just asked him what it was in French. He said the fish was “cuire au four.” Ah-hah!! ”Oven-baked” is a far cry from “over backed.” Despite the fact that my French was (apparently) somewhat better than his English, he still insisted in speaking in English to me. <le sigh>

I have also literally seen the word “snout” on a translated menu. Mes chers Français, you should probably write something to the effect of “local specialty sausage” instead of actually writing any of the ingredients of said item, at least if you want to “mettre l’eau à la bouche” des Américains. As a general rule we tend to shy away from *known* offal. Of course, I can almost guarantee that any American claiming to detest offal has eaten several hotdogs in their life. Nobody knows or wants to know what is actually in a hotdog. Besides, if you just put the actual French name of the sausage on the menu, with the word “sausage” in parentheses, they’ll go for whatever it is because in French, everything sounds fancier to Americans. I myself might try the dish that listed “snout” because I know that there are some really great French sausages. And then there is also andouillette, which I actually am scared to try. My husband tried and really liked “andouille de Guémené” when we visited Bretagne. It’s a sausage made from pork intestines among other things. A definition from the “Regions of France” website:

This speciality of Guemene (a town located in the historical Brittany region that once encompassed the Loire Atlantique department) is different from the other recipes. The Breton pork sausage is indeed made of the typical “chaudins”, the large intestines of the pig which are rolled up the ones on the others – 20 to 25 guts are required for one andouille! That is why the Andouille de Guémené is recognizable when sliced, thanks to its concentric circles.

—Regions of France website

As I mentioned, my husband quite enjoyed this sausage. I found it to be a bit…strong for my liking. It wasn’t a horrible thing, and I would likely taste it again, but I’m not in a hurry to have a whole plate of it or anything.

Speaking of things that I am a bit hesitant over, I did eat and enjoy(!) two oysters on our most recent trip to France. In Lyon, we met up with a friend of ours who lives in Dijon and loves oysters. He took us on an excursion to Les Halles Bocuse in Lyon. We sat at an oyster bar and had a half dozen oysters between the three of us and a glass of wine to go with it. We let him order everything and we followed the instructions on how to enjoy them. They were surprisingly not bad! They smelled pleasantly of the ocean and they tasted like they smelled. The lemon they gave us with it was a nice accompaniment. There was also bread (this is France after all!) and butter. We tried one oyster with lemon, and a second one with a sort of vinegar with shallots in it. They were small oysters, and that was nice. Apparently the best ones come from Bretagne, and there are certain times of the year when it is good to eat them. This is a far cry from the buffets in Las Vegas in the early 90’s. Évidemment!

I thought we did great for a couple non-oyster lovers. I’d even eat a couple more of them someday. Then our friend dropped this information on us: A real French person having an oyster meal might consume not two oysters, but two dozen or so…per person! So it is no wonder that the server looked at us with that puzzled expression.

We went on to enjoy so many other things from les cartes on our French vacation! One thing about traveling in France is that no matter what else you do or see, you can find delicious meals to put a fine touch on your sightseeing. It is definitely worth it to learn a few words in French to aid you with la carte, and I found a nice website with some of them here at FluentU. Oh, and if you do see snouts on the English menu, don’t be afraid…too much.

Click on the picture to find out more about Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday!