Dessert in the Desert. French Menu Words Made Easy For French Restaurants and Travelling to French Speaking Countries

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You can find French menus is France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, St Martin in the Caribbean, many more French speaking islands, French speaking Africa, and major cities all over the world.

A fancy French restaurant - how exciting. But how do I read the menu? Here are some French words you may see on a menu. Mystery solved.

amuse-bouche or amuse gueule - literally to amuse your mouth - complimentary, compliments of the chef, a teeny taste to keep you busy with a bite size morsel while they are preparing your next course

croissant - crescent, crescent shaped flaky pastry often eaten for breakfast, in Paris and France and sold freshly baked.  Where do they find the room to cook, don't worry, it might actually mean baked in an oven or microwave from supplied dough, or shaped dough. Find it in supermarkets in London even a tiny branch of Tesco Express. Nowadays the crescent is often straightened out.


Croissant cut to show texture. Photo by SKopp in Wikipedia under croissant.

Biftek - beefsteak - a Franglish or mixed English and French word, English beefsteak pronounced the French way

boeuf - beef - the English word beef comes from the French word for beef or cow, (vache being the female or dairy cow)

bombe - bomb or ball shaped desserted, often chocolate with ice cream inside, sometimes exploding to reveal contents when heated, an exciting surprise.

dessert - dessert or sweet dish - from/outside of, the service, just like hors d'oeuvre or starter is outside the service of the main course. From des servir, so the letter 's' doubled. Now you can remember that dessert is the sweet dish. Desert with only one s is the noun sandy desert, short of water and short of the double s. Desert, to desert, the verb to desert also has a single s. Only the sweet dessert with too much sugar has the double s. Alternatively remember that the word sweet has a double e and the word dessert has a double s.

flambé - flamed (The word is pronounced flom-bay to rhyme with Bombay. That upward accent tells you that your voice goes up at the end of the word as if you were asking a question. The accents are there to help you. The same system is used in translating other languages including Chinese). Just think of flambé like the word comb which has a silent b and you will instantly see and remember that the word flambé means flame.




glacé - glazed or with icing or preserved as in glace cherries

hors d'oevre - literally outside of (the main) work or main course, starter

Maitre d - master of - all the other waiters, man in charge of dinner time servers. Want help, not satisfied got a complaint or compliment, call for him. He may wear a smarter outfit.
menu - menu


Petits fours, picture from Wikipedia.

Petit four (singular) or petits fours (plural) - Petit means small as in the word petite which is feminine ending in e. The four is the oven like a furnace, so you know this is some cooked concoction, not merely fruit, but little things cooked in the oven. Up come tiny biscuits and cakes and chocolate whatnots and all or mostly marzipan shapes, sweets to end the meal.

Pain au chocolat - bread or pastry with chocolate chips or filing inside, for breakfast in France and UK supermarkets and hotel buffets

Pot de chocolat - pot of chocolate, or chocolate pot

The sommelier. Photo from Wikipedia.

sommelier - knows something about serving the wine, much more than you do and is happy to advise because he has a qualification in serving wine and spends hours choosing the wines and bargaining and buying and storing them at the right temperature and serving them at the right temperature hopes to get a tip if you like his suggestions

service compris - service included (as in the word comprised)

valet parking - they park your car and take the keys so they can bring it back. Check if this service is complimentary, if the restaurant make a charge, if you have a choice, if you are expected to leave a tip

Where do you find French?
WIKI SAYS:
French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents,^[5] most of which are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 84 countries which share the official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France, the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick as well as other Francophone regions, Belgium (Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region), western Switzerland (cantons of Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, Vaud, Valais), Monaco, partly in Luxembourg, the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in the United States, and in northwestern Italy (region of Aosta Valley).

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_pastries

Note that the French accent in Paris is different from the French accent in Canada. To hear the french click on the sound symbol in Wikipedia, Google translate and several other websites.

You can use your French in Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland and French islands in the Caribbean such as St Martin, and in many more countries as well as when reading menus in French restaurants, in kitchenware shops.

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To learn more French and many other languages such as Spanish, you can use the free websites for beginners, such as Duolingo and Memrise:

Useful Websites
Free Language Learning
duolingo.com
memrise.com
https://translate.google.com/



SHOPS
Cheese Shops in London, England

https://www.lafromagerie.co.uk/
French Department Stores worldwide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printemps
www.galerieslafayette.com

TRAVEL
UK Tourist website

visitbritain.com


French Tourist Board Website

http://ee.france.fr/


BELGIUM
http://visitbelgium.com/

CARIBBEAN - ST MARTIN

http://www.stmartinisland.org/

Official website of the Tourist Office of St Martin island in the Caribbean, information on the island of St Martin, French West Indies.

Canadian Cities Tourist Board Website
http://www.visit-canada.com/

Swiss tourist official website
https://www.swiss.com/

General Information on food, wines and service
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sommelier

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Misadventures With The Wrong Language Group, Wrong Coach, Wrong Taxi

Flag of France from Wikipedia.

Problem
Have you ever lost your tour group or had trouble finding your coach or taxi in a car park during a travel trip?

Story of My Misadventure
I once joined an English speaking group on a guided tour of a stately home in France - and I stopped to take a photo. We had joined the English tour group of the stately home. I did not know the guide or the other people on the guided tour, and neither the guide nor the other guests knew me.

 I was with a group who had an English speaking guide - easy, ok?

I saw a group at the end of the gallery and ran up. From the back of the crowd I worked my way forward. When I could hear, I realised the guide was speaking German!

 Okay, so maybe we had some Germans in our group. Eventually I asked him if he could repeat his story in English. He told me, "You are with the wrong group. This is a German group."

I tried three different group before I found the English group.


If only they had carried flags!

That's one story of my French misadventure. It was not my only misadventure. Call me Miss Adventure.
Flags are very handy.

Learn A Language
On the other hand, if I had learned to speak German fluently, I could have stayed with the German speaking group. But then I would have my husband, got back to the car park at the wrong time and boarded the wrong coach.

You also need flags on coaches. Several time I have been on a tour and the guide has told us to remember our coach number plate. Trying to remember a coach number plate is much harder than recognizing a flag.

Identifying A Taxi In India
As for a taxi, I once remembered the ending of a taxi number plate in India. When I emerged from the museum, which had four exits and four car parks, I discovered that all taxis had number plates ending with the same two digits or letters.

If only I had brought with a little Union Jack and Blutac to stick it on the front windscreen. It is easy enough to take a picture or flag from a magazine or newspaper or free map and keep it in your handbag or travel bag to add to your suitcase or taxi windscreen.

Useful Websites
For a free learn online language website for French, German and English from other languages, try:
duolingo.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Community Clubs In Singapore - Please Copy

In England, Harrow is threatening to close down Harrow Arts Centre. But Community Clubs are being built and renovated all over Singapore. Mayor of London, please copy.

Singapore has numerous community clubs or community centres, called CC for short. From most maps inside an MRT station you can identify a nearby Community Centre. 

In the morning you can see the elderly doing tai chi snail-slow exercises like slow motion ballet dancers in the outdoor courts at the front. Children arrive for the creches and the music school lessons. The office at the entrance hall can direct you to activities. You pass the gym, the dance groups, the Mandarin classes. 

In the evening I go to toastmasters International Speakers groups. You can find English language groups, and bilingual groups where speeches and evaluations are given in in Mandarin and English.

Every few years each CC is upgraded. the latest in 2016 include Cairnhill near Newton MRT (underground railway) station.

A new CC is being built next to HillV2 mall, a few steps downhill from Hillview MRT station on the Downtown line.

A few opportunities:

Mandarin classes: Cairnhill CC.

Francophone French speaking Toastmasters club, Cairnhill CC.

Star Millenium Toastmasters club, Cairnhill CC.

community clubs in singapore

Angela Lansbury, BA Hons, CL, ACG, travel writer and photographer, English teacher, speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.