French Tip #37: à table!

A foreigner tries to make sense of the French

The French take food and the table very seriously indeed. Privately, I often think of the French table as their “home entertainment center”. That’s where they spend most of their social time, and that’s the ultimate object of much of their day – preparing, cooking, eating, shopping, discussing – everything in French life tends to revolve around the dinner table.

Like so many other aspects of French life, it took me a long time to notice certain things at that table. But once noticed, they can’t be unnoticed. Here are just three of them.

1. Spoons

This is a tiny one, and I suspect it may just be due to my Canadian origins, but… When you get to the dessert in a French meal, it will often be some sort of cake or pastry – just like it is everywhere else, right? Well, not just like, because here, all dessert is invariably eaten with a spoon.

In Canada, we use a fork. It would never occur to me to tuck into a piece of apple pie for example with a spoon! There’s something near-heretical about it, and it definitely changes the taste, and not for the better. But I’d be interested to hear from different cultures in the comments on this one.

2. Refined taste

Here’s another one I have trouble understanding, even after years of being here and even of saying this myself. Complimenting the cook/chef for a well-prepared dish is the least you can do at a French table – or anybody else’s table anywhere in the world, for that matter. Say nice things about what you’re eating. Duh. What else are guests for?

But in France, the highest compliment that you can pay to a specific dish is “c’est très fin comme go?t!”, which could be translated as “the taste of this is very fine (or ‘refined’). However, I have learned after long experience, that “refined taste” means “no taste”. Paradoxically, then, the nicest thing you can say to a French host/ess is “wow – this is so good – I can’t taste a thing!”

French people can't tell you what's going on here, but I see it as a variant of the emperor’s new clothes. It is as if the diner was saying to his host/ess: “This taste is so elevated – so refined – so non-existent – that only a serious gourmet could appreciate it. Only someone with French taste buds would be impressed. Thank you for treating me like a serious gourmet!”

All that to say that if you’re ever invited to dine at a French person’s house, this is what to say about one of the dishes – but not all of them. Try using it only on the food that has no taste…

3. Pass the salt

This one has not stopped surprising me since I noticed it. If you’re like me, a little more salt is just critical for the enjoyment of some food: fries, beef, vegetables, and very much so on. But outside of a restaurant, I have never – never – never seen a salt shaker on the table when I sat down. If you want salt, you're going to have to ask your hostess to go get it.

Ok – that’s strange, but it’s not the most strange. The really weird thing is when you do ask for the salt, your host/ess grips his/her chin and stares vacantly skyward for a few moments as they try to recall just where they would have put such an exotic spice as salt in their kitchen? They’ve heard of it, they may even have bought some a few years back, but in just which cupboard did they hide it…? After much searching and opening and closing of cupboard doors, they can usually manage to come up with a dusty old salt shaker from somewhere at the back of the shelf.

Again, what’s going on here is that you’re sitting at a French table, and that puts you in a very different culinary world. The French chef – male or female – is convinced that whatever they have prepared and put on that table is – modestly – wonderful. It is sliced and prepared and spiced and cooked and heated to perfection following a recipe that dates back to oh, Charlemagne. It needs no adornment, it needs nothing extra. It is complete in itself.

When you ask for the salt, you are gilding the lily, you are changing that wonderful recipe. You are imposing your juvenile foreign taste onto grown-up French cuisine. The exactly required amount of salt is already in the food. Why – why would you need any more?

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Bonus tip: The title of this article comes from the universal meal-time announcement that it’s time to sit down and start eating: “A table!” The best translations I have come up with are weak and unclassy things like “Soup’s on!” or “Come and get it!”