Re: [tlug] [OT] French cuisine

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

On 05/30/2012 09:21 PM, Attila Kinali wrote:
8>< schnitt
> I had a quite different experience:
> 10 days in the outskirts of London. The only places to eat were two pubs,
> a chinese, an indian and a turkish. I'm not a fan of indian food (too
> much of a spice potpouri for my taste) and the chinese was.. edible
> at best... The pubs... well, they were pubs...
> In the end i ate every day at the turkish. After making clear that i
> was turkish myself i got various dishes not on the menu in sizes that
> were of turkish scale :-)

Ditto for me in several places in France and Germany:

- I did a project for a Japanese client in Paris that required me to 
live there for a couple of months.  Remembering a bit of Khmer and being 
able to communicate in passable Mandarin went a long way toward getting 
shown the "real" menu and food that was much different than what the 
French patrons were getting.  In one very dirty-but-excellent Cambodian 
restaurant in the dirty district below Montmartre, I was told that 
they'd added the cost of my dinner to several of the bills of the "white 
people" around me and that it was on the house.

- The only place I have had food poisoning was at an upscale "Korean" 
yakiniku restaurant in the Paris suburbs.  Except the staff spoke Thai.

- I have traveled in the UK, France and Germany with a Japanese client 
who can "pass" as a Chinese and holds a Chinese residence card.  He 
speaks a number of different Chinese dialects and, when he hears what 
the serving staff are speaking switches to a dialect from the same or a 
close-by area.  Suddenly, the menu is different and the manager comes 
out and apologizes that they've had to change the taste of the regular 
fare for the ignorant "foreigners" but there is "real" food in the back.

- Then again, if you speak passable German, there are a couple of places 
in Tokyo and Narita (the town, not the airport) that will give you a 
different menu than the one the host nationals are picking from, as well.

YMMV, naturlich ...

--
CL