Literally going to be flying to Paris today.
Good to know I guess lol.
Just in case it’s your first time in France : say “bonjour” when entering a store/ restaurant or when passing someone in an elevator or a staircase. Say “s’il vous plaît” and “merci” every time you ask for or get something respectively. This will save you a lot of nasty stares and displeased reactions. Actually that’s one of the reasons French people have a mean / rude reputation…we are VERY keen on politeness and when someone fails to respect these basic rules, we consider them rude and act rude in return (this analysis is not mine, it’s from a foreigner who lived in France for several years but, as a native french, I think it makes a lot of sense to explain the french mindset)
Thanks for the info! hopefully my Elementary school French comes back to me. (From Canada)
My pleasure! I’m sure it will come back and if you’re in Paris you should be fine even if it doesn’t. :) Enjoy France (in spite of what the world says, we’re not all jerks, I swear!).
Lots of comments complaining about restaurants not being inclusive, but it’s unrealistic to expect others to bend to your needs.
I can’t go to a vegan joint and get upset when they don’t want to serve me a steak.
Nor can I het upset when a restaurant isn’t Halal.
If you want vegan, go to a place that sells vegan food.
Offering at least one option that don’t include factory farmed food, that caused a lot of animal suffering in it’s production, should be the bare minimum.
“When I specifically go to a restaurant run by animal lovers and I can’t even get any dead animals from them, you shouldn’t be able to get food that didn’t harm animals in any restaurant!”
Wow. I guess there really are people who want to make it even harder to avoid causing cruelty, for no reason… Just why?
Reactionnary are just evil
Well it depends. When it’s a decent restaurant, some vegetarian and vegan options would be nice.
But the big issue is the terror vegans demanding on the spot a vegan option when going to a grill room or steak house. Like, wtf did you expect.
My take usually, as a vegan, is call the restaurant a few days in advance (if it is planned like a family dinner or work thing) and ask if they can make me something vegan. If not, no problem, I will deal with it. They are always happy to make me something and are happy with me asking in advance so the chef has time to prepare. But I won’t even bother asking when it’s a business completely based on meat. Like you said, don’t ask for meat at a vegan venue. Goes both ways.
But when I go somewhere for dinner with friends who are vegan or have no issues with vegan food, we usually go to a vegan place or somewhere with a partial vegan menu.
But in the case of the original post, if you don’t like coffee, just order something else in France. They don’t mind if you order water or anything. Just don’t order coffee and ruin it with milk, real or fake. A latte is just making fun of French culture. Or added water, ‘Americano’ is a term invented during the second world war to make fun of Americans who are too pussy to drink coffee like you should.
i sometimes work with data from foodchains and it turns out they sell more if they have a vegan and vegetarian option. yet hardly anyone buys any of those products - customers just want to feel inclusive.
if vegan food would be good the vegans should easily be able to run restaurants. but it is just in some hip spots where ppl actually consune the vegan food.
so we asked a few hundred in a webform i had to make and 99.9% said they like that vegan is an option but ordered meat. i think the question was something like why vegan food was part of their reasoning to come here in the first place and most wrote to not exclude workbuddies.
as long as foods just immitate other food to be able to sell it (e.g. vegan doner or burgers) I wont eat it. if it is a good vegan dish…go.
But the big issue is the terror vegans demanding on the spot a vegan option when going to a grill room or steak house.
This has ≈never happened.
Latte is an Italian drink. In France it’s café au lait (or café crème in the south), which is generally a breakfast drink, served in a bowl-like cup.
Or go to Starbucks or McDonald’s, plenty of those in France too0
I was backpacking Europe. I had just left Amsterdam and gotten to Berlin. I ordered a Heineken on impulse and the bartender looked appalled and said no.
That is patently untrue. People drink piss in Berlin too, in fact, Berlin is a major tourist destination. Heineken is produced in The Netherlands and widely available and consumed throughout continental Europe. This idea that Europeans won’t serve you something they themselves wouldn’t consume, or find repugnant is also not true. But it sounds like a cool anecdote to someone who’s never been there and knows absolutely nothing about it. If you’re gonna tell that lie again, at least use Budweiser, or Coors light. At least that sticks with the theme of uncultured American faux pas, which is what your story was trying to emulate.
It is absolutely true that people drink piss in Berlin, it’s not called Heineken but Berliner Kindl though.
I’m pretty sure that a bartender that doesn’t stock a specific brand of beer out of disgust for it won’t sell it to you. You’re way overreaching with your criticism of reasonably viable story.
If they don’t have oat milk, what should’ve they said?
This never happened. They would have given him a cup of black coffee and said " bro you’re in France now"
For extremely busy restaurants / cafe’s where people are already waiting long periods, they probably don’t want to overcomplicate things too, and increase the risk . They’d have to keep 2 different milk frothing machines, and every time a customer got sick, risk getting sued, whilst slowing down the efficiency of orders.
Whilst it might increase the number of potential customers, in practice, it might only have negatives
In Italy, at “L’Isola della Pizza” in Rome, I asked the guy if I could get a pizza with salami, pepperoni, and sausage, and the guy was like “ah, American style!”
Pepperoni is what gave it away
Salami, pepperoni and sausage? What makes the first 2 not sausage and what is in your definition pure sausage?
The honest answer is this: Salami (sliced salami), pepperoni (sliced spicy salami), and sausage (pre-cooked fennel-flavored uncased/crumbled pork sausage).
In the US, “sausage” tends to generically refer to uncured, fresh, or raw sausages, often really meaning “ground meat mixed with herbs and spices sometimes in a tube or casing (but not always).”
Americans came up with the word hot dog then decided sausage should now mostly mean loose ground pork.
Is it like the Italian American “shrimp scampi” where it’s just the words for shrimp in two different languages? My understanding is that “salami” is just the Italian word for cured sausage.
Also, “pepperoni” is an Italian American word for a spicy salami that contains peppers, so it’s just a type.
lmao, it just keeps going deeper.
Chai tea 🤦♂️
So he actually asked for sausage, cured sausage and spicy cured sausage? Whatever the sausage may be?
I’ll have the spam, spam eggs and spam.
Peperoni in Italian refers peper normally bell peppers, spicy chilly is normally peperoncino.
I guess the waiter understood he meant spicy salame. Also in Italian it is salame not salami.
In Italy, pepperoni would be peppers then wouldn’t it?
In Italian, ‘peperoni’ are bell peppers – not necessarily bulbous or large, but definitely with zero to negligible heat. Chillis are ‘peperoncino’.
The French are right. When you have fabled cuisine, lauded all over the world as the gold standard… you get resistant to change. And rightfully so.
Putain, non, is indeed the proper response to said question.
I’m a french vegetarian living in France after living 6 years in Scotland, France is years behind on the diet inclusion issue, I was shocked how difficult it was to find a place to eat out in Paris, way too many cafe/restaurant/etc… gets defensive and refuse to serve you if you don’t have the “historical diet” (whatever that means) of france, and a lot of them don’t offer any “common alternative diet” options on the menu. And it’s not better outside of Paris.
Then of course there are some great places that try to include everyone regardless of their diet, and they are increasing in numbers, but they are still the exception rather than the norm which is a shame.
If you ever goes in Paris and looking for a fully vegetarian classy restaurant, I recommand “Polichinelle”, it’s a bit on the expensive side (~50 euro/person), but it’s high level cuisine, and for a special occasion it’s really worth it.
The French are actually quite conservative in many ways.
Italy is just as bad with this kind of stuff, at least in my experience. I’m not even vegan or vegetarian, but I saw it happen a lot when I was there. They had the same kind of “historical diet” excuse, and I’m sitting here thinking “you fuckers didn’t even get tomatoes until the 16th century and now you’re acting like you invented them.”
I hate food purists so much.
Not many vegan options around, but one place in Sorrento made me the best vegan pizza I ever had when I asked (there was nothing vegan on the menu). No vegan cheese necessary, I think it was the crust and oil that made it. Got bored of the same tomato pasta item every night at the hotel though.
One of the most basic pizza, the marinara (tomato, oil, garlic, oregano) is technically vegan and any pizzeria worth its name will have it on the menu.
Interesting, thanks. The Sorrento place was a cafe so they didn’t specialise in pizza, but it sure was good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a marinara pizza marked vegan here in Oz. They probably all use bulk garlic sauce bottles with milk as ingredient.
I’m guessing you’re not in Melbourne then, but Red Sparrow is a fully vegan pizza restaurant with a few locations there. Very good, from what I’ve heard.
Never been to Italy, but I expected it would be even worse over there, Italians are often very invested in their opinion about food😄 some of my Italian friends can spend the whole meal debating about what they are eating
Pasta too lol Cut it with the knife and you get to eat for free… until they kick you out
All of Europe is highly anti veg. As it should be.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a German restaurant without a good choice of vegetarian options and at least some vegan ones. Germany is about 2% vegan, 10% ovo-lacto-vegetarian, and 55% flexitarian. That’s 67% of the population having an active look at those choices and you’d be very out of place with “if there’s no meat it’s not food” comments. You just insulted a huge number of quite cherished traditional dishes.
Go on, go, go to Swabia and say that Käsespätzle are not food. I’m waiting. They’ll probably lock you into a madhouse.
A French person decrying the lack of quality food in Paris in comparison to Scotland. British cuisine is truly amazing.
Haha, Indeed the irony is at its maximum. Although, I think haggis was pretty good (even the vegetarian version)
While I’m talking about it, have you guys seen the documentaries about wild haggis ? https://youtu.be/tvLXG4_SoO4
The waiter probably was conveying it’s not on the menu or is out of stock. No big deal…
Definitely not on the menu. Most people don’t have milk in their coffee in France, and oat milk is even rarer. The default coffee experience, a small black coffee, is vegan on its own.
But I can appreciate the frustration. Oat milk is cheap and has low environmental impact, it would be good for it to be offered more widely, regardless of taste.
But France have very good brands of plant based milk. Its not like they are against it.
I am not a vegan but oat milk lattes are the best lattes. They are creamy, rich with flavor that’s perfectly aligned w the coffee, lower in calories & more sustainable than classic dairy.
Everyone should try them once at least.
I just made a smoothie with a frozen berry blend I got from Costco. Yep, I used oatmilk
I don’t think this story/tweet is real. Or maybe just the misunderstanding that the restaurant didn’t have oat milk on hand.
Totally agreed that oat milk superior flavor for many different applications. Milk from a tiyty just ain’t it for smoothies and stuff. I don’t make any smoothies with animal milk.
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I like oatmilk in general. Oatmilkshakes are also awesome and oatmilk is way better in cereal
Too many people tried soy milk or almond milk and it has unfortunately turned them away from dairy alternatives. Oatmilk leagues above all the rest.
I also didn’t like soy milk at first now I have it with cereal almost daily, so I guess it’s also getting used to the flavour.
Soy milk slays on protein though. If that’s important to you.
Definitely. Though I do quite like chocolate almond milk! I find almond milk tk be a tolerable alternative some of the times but ugh soymilk
Oat milk things out frozen drinks but I agree it’s delicious all the same.
Yes! The moment I tried oatmilk I realized the nuttiness of the oat compliments the coffee bean aromas making it the superior milk for espresso drinks
This is the real answer. The french aren’t the pretentious ones in this story, they’re the plebs who don’t know any better haha
(All in good fun)
No, they just have way better milk than us
I must keeping getting crap oatmilk. I always feel like it’s watery, and I shake it before pouring.
I also drink whole milk, and think anything under 2% might as well be water. Unless it’s a chocolate milk full of thickeners instead of just milk and chocolate.
I also get plain, because I don’t want added sugar.
Suggestions?
Oaty brand oat milk.
They have some kind of special ingredient that keeps everything properly emulsified.
Warning it’s not cheap. I maybe buy a carton a week.
Oatly barista in the grey cartons is hands down the best IMO after trying loads of other brands. I get it at publix in the US or Tesco in the UK
.
But Oatly has shitty additives
You have to go for the stuff with added fat - barista style - to get anything approaching decent.
A lot of brands make extra creamy versions that work better in coffee imo. Some sell a barista version which is also extra creamy and designed to steam well for lattes. Theyre more calorie dense though, so you kinda lose one of the main benefits. My favorite milk for lattes is ultra-filtered whole milk.
Mighty is the best brand I’ve tried by a margin, they do a barista one but for an all round milk replacement the whole m.lk is great. They use a blend of oat and pea though I think
Starbucks gets watery oat milk I dunno
Just use whole milk.
I do.
But I have vegan and lactose intolerant family and friends. So I try to keep shelf stable options on hand for when they visit.
After they leave, I use what’s left so it’s not wasted, and would prefer an option that I like too.
Makes sense.
Maybe try cachew milk? It’s pretty tasty.
I agree. My preference goes oat then whole. I like the nuttiness that the oat milk adds. Local café was doing a monthly special, and they’re the best in the county so I tried it. It became my regular order.
Barista style oat milk is fantastic, froths so nicely.
I just bought one last week. Works well. Enjoyable but clearly different than whole milk.
Sticking to it for health.
For health reasons you might take it a step further one day, the unsweetened versions have a lot less fat and sugar in them. I got used to it after barista oat milk and now I prefer the more coffee-y taste of my coffee tbh
No way this is real.
The waiter would have said “Non.”
… wouldn’t that be pronounced the same, though?
Non
Non is pronounced without a complete final n, but air diverts through the sinuses as if you did pronounce the n. Or even as if you said nōng, but didn’t finish saying the g.
Yes, it was joke. To those who don’t speak French, it just sounds like “no” with a French accent.
“No”, on the other han, does not sound like “non” to the French; they’re used to differentiating nasal versus non-nasal vowels.
😳
Food snobs might be one of my least favorite types of humans there are. The minute I hear/see someone start talking about how they would never eat that or whatever other bullshit, is almost like I’m hearing them start talking about the good things Trump is doing for everyone. Let’s never cross paths again, you’re insufferable.
In this thread, most of both the French and the vegans are insufferable. I like a nice strong black coffee and I don’t eat a lot of meat, but there’s a reason I don’t really want to go back to Paris or to half of the vegan restaurants I try.
I mean, it really depends on their delivery.
If they’re acting like it somehow un-stinks their shit, ok fuck off.
However, there are certain foods that everyone loves that I simply cannot stand. Cake, is a big one. I will actively seek against eating cake. It frequently leaves me feeling gross, especially on an empty stomach. I do not see it as good. I can understand someone speaking about food like that.
Either that, or oat milk isn’t on the menu and he didn’t have any.
I’m also referring to this thread.
Then that is a failure on the business. It is a very common request.
Seems like more a failure of you for not checking if they do oat milk. And they likely do lots of other types of vegan milk as alternatives
Honestly, the kind of person who gets pissy about this kind of thing, you’re probably better off not having in your restaurant or cafe anyway. Because they’ve probably got a list of food requirements
I have a friend with actual gluten intolerance, and she stopped telling restaurants about it specifically because otherwise they’d freak out. She’d just order things like minimal gluten and only ask if she wasn’t sure.
But she’d never ask for substitutions either
There is no way of knowing how busy this place is. They might be completely full and serving 10 different types of milk might simply slow things down and increase their risk if they accidentally mix the containers
It’s only a failure if they wanted to do that kind of business. If I open an Italian restaurant and someone orders Thai, did I fail?
“Do you have eggs? Yes. Do you have noodles? Yes. Do you have curry paste? Yes. Do you…”
~ worst customer you will ever meet
It’s not common at all.
“At all”?
In the year 2024, Oatly had annual revenue of $823.67M with 5.15% growth. Oatly had revenue of $214.32M in the quarter ending December 31, 2024, with 4.99% growth.
Oatly’s key markets are Sweden, Germany and the United Kingdom. The company’s products were available in 60,000 retail stores and 32,200 coffee shops around the world as of 31 December 2020.
Do you really think that Sweden, Germany and UK is all the world there is? I’ve got a surprise for you.
I get the sneaking suspicion you enjoy being contrarian for contradictions sake.
I love France they take food and tradition seriously while at the same time their own government is afraid off them.
All governments should be afraid of their people. The French ae doing something right.
If I were a government, I’d be afraid of French traditions, too.
I love France and all, but let’s not pretend they have good coffee culture. What passes for cappuccino there… The horrors I’ve seen.
Coffee lovers and cappuccino are mutually exclusive terms IMHO :D.
Italy entered the chat…
There is plenty of good coffee in Paris, but you need to go to typically smaller places where they only make that.
Although I don’t drink milk much anymore I wouldn’t know if the cappuccino they make is good.
It’s crazy, food is top notch, or what you pay for it, but coffee is always the french 3/4. So not very good.
To be fair, they invented it and the Italians refined the espresso in 1961 so.
Part of why it’s relatively bad is because they still make it the same way as they did back then
Sure, but the “third wave” coffee is even worse IMO.
Is that foamy lattes w syrup?
Nah, the “hipster espresso” I’d call it. Usually tastes sour, "but that’s normal, not everyone can appreciate all the ‘flavours’ "
