Flag of France
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 de
s 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 flamb
é like the word comb which has a silent b and you will instantly see and remember that the word flamb
é 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.
.
To learn more French and many other languages such as Spanish, you can use the free websites for beginners, such as Duolingo and Memrise:
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.
