French Dinner with Friends

At the "Alliance Francaise" gathering, we met a friendly couple from Paris. They invited us to their home on Friday to have dinner with some friends.

French people eat late (we know that from our trip to Paris in 2005, restaurants don't open until 7PM for dinner), our host said dinner would be at 8PM. We got there at 7:45PM, then we chatted and didn't start dinner until 9PM!

Dinner looked fancy. For appetizer, we started with some smoked salmon with some cherry tomatoes and some lettuce. Then for main course, they took a dish out of the oven and it was still boiling. It was a dish with cheese on top, "au gratin" as we would say in English, but in French, it would be the adjective "gratiné". It looked very cheesy... I asked, "Is this what we call mousaka?", they replied, "It's 'hachis parmentier'". Oh, wow... "What is it?" "It's a dish made of beef, onion, and potatoes." Wow... "What origin does this come from?" "Euh, I think French... it should be French." I took a bite and recognize right away this comfort food. "Oh, I know this dish", I said, "in Quebec, we call it 'pâté chinois'!". They found me very weird: "pâté chinois" literally means "Chinese pie"! Yup, I'm not kidding!!! In Quebec and New Brunswick, there's a version of hachis parmentier with added corn that we call pâté chinois. (You probably wonder why it's called like that, well, read the links then. ) Between the main course and dessert, there was a dish cheese, hmm... I tried Roquefort cheese for the first time! It was strong!!! Hehehe, I wonder how these French people stay slim with all this food (and drinks)!!