EATING IN A PARIS BRASSERIE

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS AND THIS IS HOW YOU BEHAVE

If all goes well, May-Britt and I are now having an omelette du fromage and who knows, maybe also a glass of wine. I hope it's Café de Flore. Or Café Charlot. Well, it doesn't really matter to me that much. There are few brasseries in Paris that I don't like. Just put me there for a whole day. I can seriously watch for hours how the Parisiennes. They dress, how they eat, how they talk… Everything. And then I always want to live in Paris right away. One day it will happen. Not forever, but for a while.

To dine like a Parisienne, there are quite a few rules in a restaurant. I will share them with you and give you some tips. Maybe you also have dreams of living in Paris. Shall we do it together?

Always wait until the waiter assigns you a table. That's just how it works. On the terrace, it can be different; you sit down as soon as you see a free spot.

Note that not all waiters are always that nice. It's not you; that's just how Parisian waiters are.

If you join for dinner, it's customary to have an aperitif instead of immediately ordering a bottle of wine. A Kir Royal, for example (champagne with a splash of crème de cassis). That's really how it's done in Paris.

Having a beer with dinner is quite frowned upon. You only have that before or after somewhere in a café.

The ladies always eat small dishes. That can be about four of them. As a main course, some cheese in between, and for dessert. But they are all tiny bites. No large plates of kale like we have.

By the way, if the waiter asks how you want your steak cooked, you say this:

Steak tartare is RAW meat, not a little tart.

Cheese. Paris loves cheese (thank god!), but you order that between the main course and dessert. So not after your dessert. Of course, you don't have to have the whole shebang. Then you can choose either cheese or a dessert. That's logical.

It's also very normal to stare at the dessert menu for half an hour and then choose to skip dessert.

After eating, a Parisienne doesn't have a cappuccino or a latte, but a petit café or a café gourmand. Then there's a little sweet treat with it.

Paris doesn't have lunch with sandwiches like we do, but usually with a hot dish. If you still want a sandwich, choose a brasserie that has tartines on the menu. Those are very thinly sliced sourdough bread. Delicious.

Oh yes, it's handy to know that the further you sit from the bar, the more expensive your glass of wine is. At the bar, it's the cheapest, it gets a bit more expensive when you sit at a table in the restaurant, and it's the most expensive outside on the terrace. This rule applies to many brasseries in Paris.