The Donkey’s Mouth

Faux pas du jour?

// July 30th, 2009 // Uncategorized

I’m on vacation in France with my family and I went into a restaurant and ordered french fries asking: “a porter?”, thinking I was asking if I could get them to go. I noticed the waiter gave me a strange look, but I thought he was deciding if he could oblige me. Later, I noticed signs by restaurants advertising “a emporter”, and it slowly started dawning on me that I had said it wrong when I was ordering the fries.
And what does “a porter” mean? I think it means “to wear”. I’m sure the look on the waiter’s face was him weighing how much fun it would be versus how much trouble he would get into if he really did oblige my request to “wear the fries out of the restaurant”.