Englishtart

That is what I always thought...isn't the word 'entree' french?

Kaffy Mintcake

Yes it is, meaning entry. Here's the history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entr%C3%A9e

cindyabs

Back in the day, they decided to get fancy describing meals and fancy meant french.

They still do it and personally I think they get carried away.

kimilseung

This is an interesting point,
for me too, at one time, it was dinner and tea,
a lot of my Americaization is also Angloization, or the Anglo mainstream, thats the bit that hurts the most, saying all them posh things, like "dinner"

dunroving

Well, I got to about Page 2 before I realized this thread should be titled "Why the hell can't American wait staff read my mind?"

Chugabug

My wife and I went out for a meal the other night and it seemed very rushed. I hardly had time to ask them to supersize it.

Sally Redux

Yes, if you go to France, entrees are starters. They didn't look in Webster's dictionary.

Englishtart

Englishtart

silly french people!

Stacey p

Hiya, we have a weekend in washington in January. Where else would you reccommend for food? We have 2 young children and it will be my hubbys b day while were there, we will be staying near the dupont circle.

E17Avenue

I had a similar experience to the original posting this week.

I went with the wife to a popular chain restaurant that sounds like fruity little buzzy things.

We had about three hours to waste and not a lot of money to spend, so I nursed a tall glass of Blue Moon and we were just "hanging out". We'd already eaten just an hour earlier, we just wanted a pint and something to do. It was in a town with no decent pubs - having lived there before we were well aware of that. It was the middle of the afternoon and no more than 10-20% of the tables were occupied.

I was about 2/3 down the 22 oz beer when the waitress brought out the bill without asking us if we wanted anything else. The bill was loosely folded in half and tucked under something on the table. She did say if we wanted anything else to let her know and she would add it to the bill. Ok we thought, fair enough.

I nursed the remaining 1/3 of the glass down to about half an inch and she came back, asking if I wanted another. I said no, that will do for now. We only had another 20 minutes to waste so I didn't want to pour another one down me. But she did not know that. She then flipped the bill around with two fingers and straightened it out facing me. This I found to be very rude. I swigged down the last of the beer and got the card out, and we were out the door within minutes. We wasted the 20 minutes elsewhere.

I won't blame this particular chain as the same experience can be had anywhere. I will ask my "fruity buddie" who works at one here what she thinks of the whole thing. As a fellow expat she should be on this thread anyway.

AmerLisa

We were there last night, not by choice, but because our daughter won an award from school and she got a free dinner there. Anyway, Friday night and we get a table right away, but we get this hulking waiter who mumbled the whole time. He hovers around the table and I felt extremely under pressure to decide what I wanted. What I wanted was to leave, but this was for our daughter, so what do you do. Besides my husband is grimacing at me and telling me to be nice. So I'm kind of joking around every time he pounces, ready to take our order. And at one point I said, jokingly "I'm trying to figure out what I want" He shot back with "well I'm not trying to hurry you, ma'am" Yeah, right. Anyway, we finally place our order and get our food. It was crap food and all I can say was we were in and out in under an hour....

Bluegrass Lass

ok..somebody PM me and tell me what 'fruity buzzy' restaurant you're talking about cuz I'm completely clueless!

Kaffy Mintcake

Check your karma.

dunroving

If I say "Pear-Wasps", what comes to mind?