So, I know I have ranted about the French and "time," but tonight I have figured it all out. The french believe that americans waste time doing trivial things and that their way of life is "living." So here is a typical french persons day in this rednecks perspective (now living amongst them). They decide to go to work around 9-9:30am and work for an hour or so, but then it is time for a coffee break. Not go get some coffee and come back to your work area, but go hang out, talk about life for 30+ minutes. They decide again to go back to work around 11am and proceed to work for about an hour; then it is time for lunch. Now I know I have extolled on the wonders of the 2 hour lunch. Businesses shut down (no shopping for you from 12-2pm) and go feed themselves. Most americans would say, hey that is great, time away to relax and enjoy lunch. Fine. The french decide to go back to work again around 2pm and manage to work this time for about 2 hours before you guessed it; coffee break. So now around 4-4:30pm is more time for coffee (and smoke'em if you gottem) and again discuss the wonders of life. Again, they decide to go back to work around 5 and work for another couple of hours deciding they have put in enough "hard time" at work and stammer out the door at around 7-7:30pm to head home. This too is a time killer, but they don't mind sitting in traffic on a bus for 1-2 hours or packing themselves into the metro like sardines and take an hour or so to get home. This is where things get fun. If you aren't going to cook and take your family out to eat (like we have currently experienced here at our 4-star resort restaurant, service is going to take 2-3 hours. So lets discuss tonight's festivities.
We take the first seating at 7:30 (heavens to betsey people WANT to eat earlier) and proceed to be waited on and our entire meal's order taken; starter, entree and dessert. Again keeping in mind the french don't mind sitting around twiddling their thumbs. It takes 30 minutes to bring the starter (we will discuss the food in a later paragraph). During this time more people are coming in with their 3-4 children (france seems to have more kids per family than the U.S. because they pay way less taxes the more kids you have). So now we are finished with our starter and 2, 3, and 4 year old kids are running around this 4-star hotel restaurant that is VERY, VERY expensive. After taking our starter plates away, we wait 45 minutes for our entree to which 3 of us get served and they bring nothing for Katherine who just ordered a steak (safe meal to order even though steak is like shoe leather over here). And we sit (we don't start because it is rude, we think they are bringing Katherine. 10 minutes pass and still no entree for our daughter who has ordered a 40 euro steak.
She feels bad and orders us to eat before ours gets cold. We finish our meal before anyone notices or we can flag anyone to say, "Hey, where is her's?" Now we don't like to stick out and make a fuss, but if you were paying 40-50 euros per person to eat, don't you think getting food out would be a priority? Waitress comes over doesn't know what happened and said they are cooking it now. Mind you this dinner started at 7:30 and it is now 9:30 before she gets something (30 minutes after Liz and I finish). 30 more minutes pass by before dessert comes. We finally pick up and leave at 10:30pm. Now this entire time those same children who had been running around the restaurant had been doing so for 3 hours. Who subjects their 2, 3, or 4 year old to that? Can it be fun to spend 200-300 euros for dinner and really not enjoy it? Oh, but they do, that is what they say is the fun in spending "family time" together. Bull. Family time is cooking at home, sitting an playing games, watching a movie together, not chasing kids in a restaurant that you are supposed to be paying for good food (again discuss in a minute) and ambiance.
Someone smarter than me is going to have to explain to me how this way of doing things is productive. They only turned our table 1 time (just us). how do you make any money that way?
4-star restaurant food. Maybe I am too much of a redneck to appreciate high-falutin food. I get as my starter soup with pieces of John Dory in it. Sounds great. It comes out ice cold. Who thinks eating cold tomato soup with cold veggies and cold pieces of fish in it? I guess because you are not cooking for the "majority" of the culture, that only weird people can really relate to this marvel of "complex" cooking (or cooling). I love food; as is evident by my size. And I think that I have a fairly discerning palate. But this is just not the way "real people" eat. Only those who think they must have something so far out, so far fetched, so out of the reach of "commoners" think this is food style.
Not me, give me a piece of steak breaded and thrown in the grease to get nice and crispy and put some mash potatoes on it with some nice country gravy. I will put that toe-to-toe with any Michelin Starred chef and I will sell circles around them and people waiting out the door to get it.
Bon Appetit!!!!!
