Food: Enjoying a Meal Like the French

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Enjoying a Meal Like the French
Thursday, August 31, 2006

I recently spent a semester in France. I'd been there a couple of times before, just for quick trips, and once for backpacking. This time, I was there for the whole semester. We learned a great deal, a lot of language, a lot of life-lessons, and a lot about eating.

The French eat in a way that needs to be explained in order to be understood. They enjoy their food, enjoy their meals, and a lot of time, are misunderstood beacause of it. I personally believe life would be a lot sweeter in the US if we all took the time to enjoy our meals like the French do.

First of all, its a common miscommunicaiton that the French are lazy because they only work about 30 hours a week. While the French don't really like to work, none of us do!, one of the main reasons for the short work week is that they need to have time to enjoy each of their meals. The French take about 3 hours for lunch instead of 1 hour, or even a half hour, like the people here in the US do. In France, a meal is more than just stuffing your face to give you energy to go back to work. In France, eating a meal is more like what it really SHOULD be - living life. You don't see French business people rushing to grab fast food and get back to their desks so they can earn a little bit more money. They start planning their lunches when they get to work in the morning, if they don't already have plans from the day before. Lunch is business, lunch is life. You might go out to lunch with your associates, or your wife, or your boyfriend. Lunch is a very important part of your work day, and you would never, EVER say you couldn't do lunch with someone - unless you were already doing lunch with someone else!

Secondly, its said that French waiters are rude. Well, this is false on several fronts, or at least exaplainable. You don't tip in France, so the waiters in France are like any other employee. They are getting the same amount of money whether they are super nice to you or not. Therefore, they aren't working for any tips, and are not going to be any more friendly than they would normally be. They won't be trying to get any extra money out of you, so they aren't going to be fake. If they are having a bad day, they will show it in the same way any other person would when providing a service. How many times have you gone to a fast food place and had rotten service? The kids working fast food aren't going to get tips, so they don't have any other reason to be nice to you. The same goes for the waiters in France.

Also, its purported that French waiters will ignore you. This is also a fact, but there is a reason behind it. When the French sit down to a meal, they very much dislike anyone hovering around them. A waiter will give you a menu and will give you water or take your drink order, and then will leave, for a good long while. This is what the French want. They want to sit around and talk, hardly looking at the menu, for quite some time. The biggest part of a French meal is discussion. The French might leave their menus open, signaling that they are still deciding, for an hour, even if they have already decided what they want to eat. And the waiters will stay away until the French close their menus. During this time, there is discussion, laughter, and business.

After the waiters have taken your order, don't be surprised if it takes awhile to get your food. This is the way it should be. French food is prepared quite slowly, because it is prepared well. Each meal, even if its just a quick lunch, is supposed to be a great event, and it would not be a great event if it was not for the wonderful food. Don't go to a sit down restaurant if you want to eat quickly. The food must be correctly and beautifully prepared, and then it must be delievered to the table.

The French also eat slowly. They savor each mouthful, intead of shoveling it in their faces like we tend to do here in the US. They pause between bites for wine, bread, and conversation. It is not polite to eat quickly in France, nor is it done very often. There is no point in hurrying your meal, because a meal is a time for conversation, laughter, and enjoying the company of the people you are eating with. They eat slowly, and they don't bother to rush. Life here could be a little better if we'd take them up on this idea.

Thirdly, its a misconception that it takes FORVER to get the ticket in a French restauarant because the waiters are ignoring you. It is simply that when the waiters put down the ticket, you are going to pay and then leave, and its considered rude to put down a ticket for someone, because that means you are asking them to be ready to leave. In France, when you sit down for a meal, the restaurant is expecting you to be there, literally, all night. Once they give you a table, they have the belief that it is your table, and you should stay as long as you'd like, ordering coffee and desert, and chatting. They would never dream of asking you to leave, or in any way hinting that you should leave, by giving you a bill before you ask for it. Most French will sit through a meal, and then desert, and then coffee. This whole time they will be talking, laughing and enjoying each other's company.

Once the party has asked for the ticket, it will again be assumed that they will simply pay at the table when they are ready. Often, they will ask for the bill, pay it, and then continue to sit and talk. This is perfectly acceptable, and the French expect that it will happen.

All of these things lead up to a meal that can take several hours. Most of the time, the French don't have dinner or supper until 7 or 8 at night, and if you go into a restaurant around 5 or 6, you shouldn't expect to be treated very well. Its not meal time, after all. Even 7 or 8 is pushing it, because most people haven't finished up lunch by 3 or 4.

We could really benefit from eating like the French here in America. If people ate slower, and savored their food, I believe that obesity would go down. There are ways to eat quickly in France, such as street sandwich shops and even the occasional fast food joint - but the food there is served in considerably smallar portions. You have to eat less because you are given less. Eating slower at a restaurant means that your body has more time to tell you its full before you stuff it with things it doesn't need. When Americans eat so fast, no matter where we eat, we often overeat because our body doesn't have time to tell our brains it is full.

This is the route of lots of our problems, I believe. Here in the US, you can go eat anything you want at any time, and you can SUPERSIZE it just about anywhere. We eat so quickly and we eat so much that we are taking in way more than our bodies really need to survive, and therefore we are eating way more than we should be eating. In france, they eat slower. By eating slower, they eat less. By eating less, they are much, much more healthy.

Besides for the simple health factors that make eating like the French a good idea, there are hundreds of othe reasons. For one, eating for hours gives you wonderful quality time with the people you are eating with. You have an excuse to be with these people and to talk, for hours every single day. The French don't usually eat in front of a television, so families sit down for 2 hour long dinners every single night. They have discussions, they talk to each other, and they enjoy each other's company. Wouldn't we benefit from this sort of thing here in the US? I certainly believe that we would.

There is also the idea of simply enjoying a meal. How often do we throw toegether something at the last minute and then scarf it down before we even know what we are eating? Its terrible, here, in the US, because we tend to eat so much and so often, and we never take the time to appreciate what we are eating. The French know everything about each meal that they eat - they take the time to learn what they are eating and to try new foods. We'd be a lot happier with our meals if we did that here. If Americans took the time to learn about what they were eating, and to enjoy it for reasons other than simply that it fills them up and makes them full, we would develop such wonderful tastes in food. The French children eat what their parents eat, and they enjoy it. They learn, from an early age, that food is an art form, and should be treated as such.

So, the next time you think poorly about the french and their eating habits, try thinking again. Try to understand why they waiters appear rude and the meals last so long. It isn't because there is terrible service and bad food, it is because in France people know how to appreciate good food and good times. We could learn a thing or two from them. The world would be a better place if everyone in it took the time to eat like the French. Sure, they may work less and therefore have less money, but thats ok with them. They have good food and they have good friends, and therefore, they have a good life.

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