French Dining Tips I What Not to Do in France!

welcome back to unintentionally frenchified if i ask you what the best thing about france is would you say the food because i do one of my favorite things about living in france is the buttery ooey incredible gooeyness of french bread of french pastries of french cheese a just french cuisine in general mwah it is so good however we do know that customer service in france is not their strong point so eating out in a restaurant is not always the most pleasant experience in france but have no fear today's video is going to help you out with that because i'm going to talk to you about the 10 things you absolutely should not do when eating out in a restaurant in france i'm hoping this video will save you the shame of being reprimanded in public by our french friends if you have not subscribed to the channel yet you know what to do right now also absolutely leave your comments below about the do's and don'ts that you want to share with everyone for eating out in french restaurants and let's otherwise dive right in say party [Music] i often remind people in my videos a very important don't which is don't expect everybody to speak english i feel the need to remind these to the english speakers out there in my tips videos because english speakers are lucky in the sense that english is the dominant business language and english is often a dominant travel language and so english speakers really often don't make the effort to learn another language especially when it's just for travel and even when it's for living somewhere this is a huge no no don't don't don't especially in france when it comes to customer service you get a lot more you know france isn't strong but you get a lot more in customer service when you make the effort to speak their language if you're planning to travel to france this year and say october or november october is my favorite favorite time of the year to visit france then the lingoda sprint challenge could be a really really great opportunity for you what's really unique about lingoda if you're looking for a way to learn a new language is the fact that their method really focuses on the maximum amount of human interaction and the maximum amount of conversation lingoda is an online language learning platform so they have classes 24 7 very flexible you can take classes whenever you want as long as you have an internet connection and the majority of classes have a maximum of five students per class but often you see more three or four students in the class along with your native speaking language teacher i find this part of lingoda to be the most helpful because you get so much personalized feedback and so much talking time when you're in a lingoda class and the thing is is that's the part of you know learning another language that's so difficult when i go into a restaurant when i first got to france and you know there's a bunch of people sitting around everybody looks up when you walk in the waiters standing right there and you have to start talking to them it's the moment where you're just you're uncomfortable it's intimidating right it can be super intimidating the sprint challenge at lingoda is a challenge that's starting this month where you sign up for either 15 classes a month for two months or 30 classes a month for two months when you commit to taking a specific amount of classes per month for those two months then lingoda on their end commits to reimbursing you either 50 of the fees or 100 of the fees for the entire sprint challenge it's such a great motivation to stick with your classes knowing that when you keep up your end of the deal so does lingoda and it really takes you from speaking nothing or very little to feeling super comfortable having basic restaurant conversations speaking with natives in the street talking to people you know and different tourist attractions you actually can speak another language after that two months i'm putting all the information about lingoda the sprint in the youtube description below i also have a really great discount code it gets you 20 years off or 25 off the sign up fee so don't forget to use that as well some key facts to keep in mind if you're kind of hesitating is lingoda has had over 100 000 students in 2021 all learning four different languages french english spanish german and they have over 1500 native language speaking teachers ready to take you from zero to hero in two months do not show up for a french meal outside of french meal time hours you will unfortunately be met with a closed sign and a locked door lunch in france is usually between 12 and 2 p.m and then dinner starts at the very earliest 7pm but it's more likely to be 7 30 8 p.m big cities will of course cater to tourists so you'll have brasseries that are open all day long but restaurants will absolutely be closed between lunch and dinner if you are someone that's hungry early you can either go and have say an apparel before dinner so you can go find a cafe you can sit down you can order something to drink you'll probably have like planche with charcuterie or or cheese that you can have or you can take part in the very french tradition of agute at 4 pm so you have your lunch at say around 12 30 and then you'll have a little sweet it's not savory and friends it's usually a sweet little snack around 4 p.m that tides you over until 7 30 or 8. okay so when you've been seated and you say bonjour because of course you're using your lingoda and you're using your french language here you might be wondering where to put your hands in the u.s the polite place to be would be to put your hands on your lap but no no no stop this in france it is not considered polite to have your hands in your lap why you ask because from what i've understood apparently when your hands are in your lap and underneath the table no one else can see them so nobody knows what you're doing so if you think i'm thinking a bit of the scene from wedding crashers at the dinner table apparently when you can't see your hands it means they could be up to no good so hands will have to be on the tables but of course no elbows this is very similar to the us elbows are considered so we won't put our elbows but we will make sure that you can see our hands you'll probably see bread on the table and no bread plate but don't put your bread onto the plate that you have for your meal i know what the french do not have bread plates okay they don't believe in bread plates your bread goes directly on the table crumbs and all when you want to take a big hunk out of it place it back on the table this is 100 normal the only time that i've ever seen a bread plate before in france is fine dining this is very different set of do and don'ts rules so i won't go into it but for the most part there is no bread plate in france on top of there being no bread plate what might surprise you is there is also no butter so you're not gonna sit down at the table and have like a basket of bread and butter like you might find in other countries you'll just have bread on the table to be fair even if this might surprise you the bread is so good in france that it doesn't really need butter and the only times that i do regularly see bread and butter at the same time is when you take like a planche of charcuterie or fromage like when you've got the cheese or you know the meat you might sometimes have pickles and then you also have a bit of butter but otherwise i don't ever see people spreading butter onto bread when it comes time to order your drink don't order anything that's not water or wine because the french just won't serve you no i'm kidding they will totally bring you a coke or whatever you ask that's on the menu but if you want to have the real french experience you won't really be drinking anything but water or wine during your meal there is a moment pre-meal where the waiter might ask you for say and a pair of teeth he'll ask do you want a do you want a drink and a pair of teeth to start out and this is normally like um an alcohol like a sherry or a pasties or maybe champagne or the french have a specific drink called akir where they mix white wine with a bit of syrup and this you would have before your meal but during the meal the french really just have water or wine and it's quite normal to have a glass of wine during lunch or during dinner they just see sugary drinks like a coke for example as being more of a treat like it's not something you would hydrate yourself during a meal it's something that you might have as like you know a good day a snack when you sit down at a cafe at like four in the afternoon other tip when you're ordering your water or your wine is that water you can ask for a kerrhaft dough if you drink tap water the tap water in france is great you don't have to pay bottled water i always ask for a chiarato when i sit down and something really great about wine in france is it is considerably cheaper than in the u.s wine is actually cheaper than a coke you know a glass of wine is cheaper than a glass of coke in most french restaurants so it's not a bad thing to say no to anything that is not wine or water if you are ordering a salad don't ask for a specific salad dressing you know that 1 000 island dressing i think it's called or the french dressing that we have in the u.s no no no you're going to get whatever salad dressing the chef thinks should be going on to your salad and sometimes that can be something fun depending on if like the salad is your whole meal if it's a side salad though like a normal basic side salad you're going to be getting a salad dressing that is a mix of olive oil a bit of balsamic vinegar like a pinch of salt and pepper and a dash of mustard like that is the typical base of a salad dressing in france so they don't have like five different types of ranch stocked back in the kitchen ready for you when you come in i thought this was kind of hard when i first got to france i found it to be really plain and now i love it it is really just the base salad dressing dressing that you put on vegetables dressing you put anywhere in france okay so i am a huge lover of pizza if you guys didn't know it's an obsession of mine i eat pizza like twice a week for sure i just love it do not if you order pizza in a restaurant in france eat it with your hands the french eat pizza and what my husband would say is a civilized manner with their fork and knife they cut their pizza i know i know if you come from a place where you eat pizza with your hands this can be a bit shocking but to be fair to france often the pizza the crust is so thin that it's kind of like floppy it's quite hard to eat with your hands unless you're someone that likes to fold your pizza which i hate doing that's not my thing your ingredients will just fall off anywhere anyways and the crust isn't thick it's very easy to cut i mean i understand why they do it even if it wouldn't be my first choice if you happen to be served full blocks of cheese on a cutting board in a restaurant do not cut the cheese yourself don't go first you can cut it yourself but let somebody else go first i would totally not blame you it is very intense the way that you're supposed to cut cheese in france and it is a major faux pas i've done this before when you cut the cheese the wrong way because basically you're supposed to cut the cheese in a way that the person who has the last slice of cheese doesn't end up with only the kruta which is like only the part of the cheese the end of the block that nobody eats right and the cheese and friends comes in so many different shapes like so many different shapes so many different sizes that you really have to know exactly how you're supposed to cut the cheese in order to do it properly this is a lot of pressure when you're eating out so i'm not going to go into the different ways in this video to cut cheese but i feel like i should do an entire video on this but i did put in the youtube description a link that will help you if you're interested in learning more but just seriously don't cut the cheese first let the waiter cut it or let someone else at your table that knows how to cut the cheese and then follow exactly the way that they've cut their cheese do not do not leave your food at the restaurant if you want to take leftover food home portion sizes in france are very appropriate so it's normal to usually finish your entire meal at the restaurant it's not like in the u.s where probably 95 percent of people are taking home leftover food in doggy bags however doggie bags didn't used to exist very often in france it wasn't something that you know they had ready for people to take food away but there's a new law that passed a while ago in france and so now restaurants have to have doggie bags plus with kovid a lot more restaurants at least in paris are doing take away so there we really are equipped to throw the leftover food in a little box for you so that you can take it home so if you have amazing leftover food from a dinner do not shy away from asking for it to go back and taking that home absolutely do not let anyone take your credit card and go to a place where you can't see them and pay for your meal i know that this is how we do it in the u.s but in france they do not do this there is no risk that someone's in the back sliding your card through the machine and also writing down your card details at the same time so they can steal stuff from you you will always be with your card sometimes you pay at the table and they come with the card machine and sometimes there's someone standing behind a register and you go and pay but again you put your card into the machine you put your code or you sign your card and you see your credit card the entire time hey do not ever give anyone in france for whatever reason when you're traveling a card where you can't see what they're doing with it don't leave a tip because you feel like you have to leave a tip because you want to this is not at all the us where we have this big culture of 20 tipping and also this culture of restaurant owners not actually paying people a livable wage to be a waitress or a waiter and so then you have to compensate that with quite a large tip that's not how it works in france now i don't want to give you the idea that servers and friends are making so much money that you don't need to tip them that's not the case but it's not something that you have to do every time it's not expected every time when i have great customer service in france because it doesn't happen that often i absolutely tip but i'm not tipping 20 like even if i throw 5 euros or four euros in or something depending on the price of the bill of course this is already seen as generous okay so don't tip because you feel like you have to you tip because you want to all right guys that is it all the don'ts for when you're eating out in a restaurant in france leave in the comments below the do's and don'ts that you think i've left out of this video that you can share with everybody don't forget about lingoda i've got everything in the youtube description below about the sprint and i also have the discount code for the 20 years off and 25 off the sign up fee so go check that out enjoy your summer enjoy august i will see you la cemene prochan bizu [Laughter] you

Channel: Unintentionally Frenchified

Views: 18,267

Keywords: eating in france, eating in france etiquette, french dining customs, french dining rules, french dining tips, french dining etiquette, french eating, french manners, table manners in france, french dining, faux pas france, be polite in france, french etiquette, what not to do in france youtube, what not to do in france, dos and donts in france, french etiquette 101, french etiquette rules, french culture tips, dining tips france, unintentionally frenchified, expat

Id: qK5SGz5pwj0

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2022