French Dining

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I have tried… but I simply cannot figure out how to make lunch last for two hours.

No matter how carefully I chew a cheese sandwich, the most I can make that last is, say, ten minutes… tops. Okay, add a cup of coffee, or maybe some iced tea… tack on another ten minutes or so.

Let’s assume another ten minutes trying to decide what to eat (and then inevitably deciding to eat what I always eat) and lunch is over. Thirty minutes and the whole thing is caput… fini. So what do you do with the other ninety minutes?

Everything closes here in France from around noon to two. Schools let out, shops close down – in our town, even the police station is closed… so apparently even the criminals are able to knock off work for the appropriate amount of time… so why can’t I?

Perhaps their secret comes from years of being trained by French waiters. You wander into a typical French restaurant, find yourself a seat, then sit. No matter where you are, it will be at least 15 minutes before the waiter decides to acknowledge the fact that you exist on his planet. They are skilled at the art of seeming incredibly busy while actually doing nothing at all. Most French waiters eventually end up serving multiple terms in congress.

Once you appear on his or her radar, he will wander over and ask if you would like something to eat. Call me crazy, but I always assumed that when I park my posterior in a restaurant at high noon and drool on the tablecloth for a quarter of an hour, it is highly likely that I want something to eat. But the waiter has apparently assumed you are here for some other reason, because he has not brought menus. So he wanders off, muttering to himself. You have obviously upset him greatly by deciding to order something. It will be at least another 15 minutes before he returns.

Now comes the part I have yet to comprehend. When he does return and asks for my order, I always screw it up. There is apparently a very rigid sequence in which you order stuff… but I must have missed that day in “ordering in French restaurant class.”

To my way of thinking, this guy is obviously put out that I am taking up one of his tables by actually eating. So I will make life easy on him. I know exactly what I want… from start to finish. He has a little piece of paper and a pencil, so I will tell him everything that I want… all at once, saving him a bunch of trips back and forth. This is nearly always a big mistake.

“Would you like an aperitif?” he asks, after leaving to retrieve his pad of paper, returning once more in 15-20 minutes. By now I have eaten the napkin and one of the arms off my chair. And no, I don’t want a small glass of some liquor I cannot name that costs more than my first house. I want food.

“No thanks,” I reply quickly. He starts to leave. I grab his leg and after a moment he stops struggling. “Look, I know what I want.” And I give him my order. But I have, at least, learned one lesson well. Never, and I repeat, never order coffee at this time. I have seen seemingly healthy waiters faint dead away when faced with this faux pas.

“Surely, monsieur, you wish to have the coffee after your meal,” his eyes almost begging for an affirmative response. Once I made the mistake of insisting that I would like coffee with my meal. The blood drained from his face. I could see him frantically gesturing to the owner. They both looked sideways at me. The cook came out of the kitchen, and after a loud exchange, went back to fetch a sharpened meat clever. Small children were sent from the room. Things were about to get ugly.

“On second thought,” I shouted at the waiter, “maybe I’ll wait and have the coffee a bit later.” You could feel the tension drain from the room. Somewhere in the background - music began to play, conversations resumed. There would be no blood shed here today.

So you wait 30 minutes for your drinks, then another 30 for your food to arrive. Getting the food is always the fun part. It’s Christmas every day, because, for me at least, I never know quite what I’m about to eat. I think I do… but that’s just a form of self-delusion like imagining that some day I might actually speak and understand French. I swear I can go back to the same restaurant two days in a row, order the same thing off the same menu from the same waiter and get two totally different meals.

“Wait a minute, I ordered an Omelette Jambon. I assumed that would have some egg in it, and maybe a bit of ham.”

“Non, monsieur, the Omelette Jambon… she is a dark fish in a cream sauce.” He will then drop the plate on the table in front of me and sigh, then disappear into the back room and I will not see him again until he has finished reading the complete works of Jean-Paul Satre. By then, of course, it is likely time for coffee.

Perhaps the strange part of eating in a French restaurant is that they never seem to want to get paid. You can dance around and wave like a chorus girl, but you will not get your bill in less than hour after you’ve finished eating.

So, now that I think of it, perhaps the big question in France is not how one can fill nearly two hours dining. Perhaps the greater question is how anyone actually gets back to work at all.

written by Jay Warmke - August, 2002

French Dining