A Cup of Coffee: Un Café S’Il Vous Plait !

I remember having to 'go for a coffee' about 3 or 4 times before I found the right coffee to order when on my own viewing trip in France looking for the right French house in the late 1990s.

Much later I remember David coming home for lunch after meeting some artisans, electricians, plumbers, roofers etc. in a cafe one morning and one of the artisans was runnig late so they all waited and ordered more cafe, after the 4th cup David said he was 'coffee drunk' and as light headed as the time he was waiting on another person and the 'Calvados' bottle came out! but that is another story...

Photo by Karol Franks on Flickr

As a fellow coffee lover the first things a friend of mine wanted to do after arriving in France was to, bien sûr (of course), prendre une tasse de café (grab a cup of coffee). She got off the plane, jetlagged and groggy from the long-haul flight, but still had the idea of that tasse in her head.

After making her way across Paris to her hotel room for the night she went out into the clmly lit streets of Paris in search for the perfect cup of coffee, how she thought she woud get to sleep that night I will never know! Naturally she found un petit café juste à côté de la Tour Eiffel (right next to the Eiffel Tower) and sat down. When viewing property in France with Cle France on a house hunting trip looking for that perfect French house to buy, do make sure you take time to stop at a Cafe and watch the world go buy, it will help you soak up the atmosphere of where you are and may wish to buy a house and perhaps even move to full time? as my friend glanced at the menu panic set in:

Café au lait

Latte macchiato

Café crème

Noisette

Cappuccino

Americano

Café viennois

There were some menu items je ne conaissais pas (I didn’t know) let alone my friend with minimum understanding of French, but, I guess, for the most part the names were easy to understand. She just wanted a simple coffee! why should it be so complicated!

When it came time to order, she said in her best French, 'Un café, s’il vous plaît' (a coffee, please), and waited for the much desired drink to come back in a few moments after lots of squirting and frothing from behind the counter.

The barista came back with her drink and put it down on my table with, the very reasonable, l’addition (the bill), then off like a shot to serve the next customer.

'He got my order wrong' was her first thought as she looked at la petite tasse de café (the small cup of coffee) sitting next to a small rectangular cookie and a few lumps of sugar almost as big as the cup. Son français (her French) wasn’t good enough to argue about it so she just drank the café and went on with her strole thourhg the streets of Paris.

However when the same problem happened again, and again, and again, she began to realise that 'un café' is not the same thing as 'a coffee', a quick phone call and all was explained.

Ordering a café is ordering what we would call an espresso! The big coffee drink that we know as 'a cup of coffee' is not that easy to come across in France but I guess the equivilent, and my oprder of choice is a 'Café crème' which often comes with a glass of water to freshen the mouth! so if you’re going to un café français (a French cafe) you may be a little more prepared now? or just do as my friend does and happily (and knowingly) say, 'un café, s’il vous plaît'.