Are You Sure That Wasn’t Horse?

A yes, the joys of traveling in another country where you don’t speak the language all that well. We just came back from a trip to France and spent a lot of time taking wrong turns and then backtracking to find our way back onto the map. We happened to have one of the funniest French phrase books you’ll ever see as our companion for this journey: the Lonely Planet French phrasebook. Even if you aren’t planning a trip to France this book is good entertainment. Random selections from it include such phrases as: “I should never have let you near me!” under the Hairdressing section or “I’m younger than I look” under Getting Friendly. Somewhat early in the trip we came across the phrase for “Are you sure that wasn’t horse?” in the restaurant section and were howling with laughter at the thought.

While our phrasebook was handy, for some reason we frequently seemed to end up places, especially restaurants, without it. On our last night in Paris, we wandered the neighborhood near our dinky little hotel room in Montmarte, feeling like we had a pretty good feel for the area and could just pick a restaurant somewhat by feel and get a good meal. We found a small little café with a few sidewalk tables that seemed to be doing a bustling business. It didn’t seem touristy and had a nice prix fixe menu for $11 euro for 2 courses. The menu was written on a chalkboard with no English translations. Our waiter spoke some English though and given the short menu we figured we recognized enough to get a good meal.

For our first course we both chose the Salade Paysane or peasant salad. It was beautifully presented on rectangular plates: nice greens, strips of colorful vegetables and bits of sausage and bacon throughout. We’re off to a good start. For my main course I chose the Hamburger Avec Oeufs a Cheval. I knew that ouefs were eggs and also knew that its fairly common to see fried eggs on things in France that you don’t normally see with eggs on them: pizza and hamburgers being among them. So, I ordered the hamburger but asked the waiter about the last word, “cheval.” He made some offhanded comment in English about it just being a way they prepare the dish or something. What the heck, it’s a hamburger with an egg; maybe cheval will be some kind of goat cheese or something.

So, I have the hamburger. It arrives with a fried egg on top and no bun. Okay, I can live with low carb. The burger is cooked beyond and inch of it’s life but the egg is tasty. I’m totally afraid to ask for condiments (even mustard) that might help to liven this sorry little burger up. So, I eat the egg leaving a good half of the burger but something is nagging at me. It’s that word, “cheval” that somehow seems familiar to me from my French lessons, or the book, or something. Later on we go back to the hotel and I grab the phrasebook in search of the mysterious cheval, only to find it translated as horse in French. So, despite the expectation to never actually need the phrase, “Are you sure that wasn’t horse?” it’s something I’ll be sure and remember before the next trip to Francais!