Coming here, my goal was to convince myself to eat escargot. I still haven't gotten the nerve up to try that, but I've made up for it with the many other foods I would have never eaten before. Most notably, the pâté de foie gras scared me with it's spam like appearance. But I was pleasantly surprised when I spread it on my bread and actually enjoyed it. Another time, my dad ordered a salad that turned out to have chicken gizzards in it. Again, the look of it was unnerving. Apparently there isn't much you can do to chicken gizzards to make them look like real meat. But again this country's chefs surprised me with the flavors hidden in the most unusual foods. I'll keep you updated on my quest to eat snails, but for now I am more than satisfied with my Camembert au miel, poulet rôti, and dourade.
Restaurants were one of the best places to practice my French - reading the menus and ordering all the food. And we always did get what we wanted. With two notable exceptions..
To assuage my dad's eagerness to learn French, I allowed him to order for himself at a fancy but friendly restaurant in Versailles called Maître Kanter. He did pretty well, ordering his entrée and then his plat. But he made one crucial mistake - he asked for wine. Not "un verre du vin" like I had taught him. Simply, wine. To our surprise (and eventually delight), the waiter placed a large bucket of ice next to our table, in which he placed a full bottle of Pinot Blanc. But hey, if our biggest problem in France is ordering too much wine, I say it's a good trip. So I laughed and helped my dad polish it off. It actually went pretty well with my seafood platter.
There was a different vibe to the second incident. On my dad's last night, we found a cute Italian restaurant to enjoy a late dinner. The problems began when the waiter didn't speak very much French. My dad managed to place his order of shrimp linguine, this time clearly requesting one glass of wine. Again, an entire bottle of white was placed at our table. We could have handled that. But then, the waiter brought us a menu and pointed at the fish section saying "no." So naturally my dad wanted to switch his wine to a red to complement the ravioli he was now ordering. And the fun began. The waiter alternated between yelling "not possible" and "no English" while my dad kept trying to communicate in any language. I swear at one point he even tried German: "Bitte beachten Sie die Lücke zwischen Zug und Bahnsteig." I knew from the announcements on the metro that he had just cautioned the waiter to "please mind the gap between the train and the platform." So I finally intervened and with elaborate hand gestures, we managed to explain "no poisson, no blanc." The waiter finally seemed to understand us, but then we realized he was just bringing us a second bottle of wine. We had learned our lesson and this time waved him away before he opened the red. It's not like my palate is so sophisticated I can't drink a white with my pasta anyway.
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