How does one ask for "Dressing on the Side"?
 

I love the marvelous Salades Composee in France, but it is always a crap shoot if I can eat them. I do not like strong vinegary flavors, and often the salad comes with too much acid for me to enjoy. I have tried, "Vineigrette a part, s'il vous plait", but I sometimes get attitude from the waiter, and perhaps a tantrum from the Chef, as the salad will still come doused with oil and VINEGAR, with perhaps an extra container of dressing..

How can I ask politely for the salad to come au natural, with the dressing to come separately, or at least with a minimum of acetic acid?

Depends if you are in a restaurant or a hotel room.

Or at your tailor, Aduchamp. Made me smile.

:-)

Unless you can invoke a medical condition, you are treading in dangerous territory here.

^^ lol :P

In much the same way you get American restaurants to serve you toast at breakfast that isn't impregnated with a ton of butter, tea made in a pot with boiling water or bacon that's not nuked to a barbecue pellet and covered in that syrupy muck.

That is: give up.

Foreigners can't cook, and you accept how they do things, find out what they don't ruin or starve.

Well, Flan, my practice wife was a Brit from Berkhamsted, and I damned near did starve because I was really slow to find something she couldn't ruin in the kitchen. Cold dry toast was a prime example.

Anyway, I'm serious about how to get a salad in France not doused in vinegar. What are the magic phrases?

I was serious, too, nuke.

As a medical condition, you can try <i>"J'ai une intolérance au vinaigre. Est-ce qu'il est possible d'en mettre très peu sur la salade?"</i> This will give the waiter a chance to suggest bringing the <i>"sauce à part"</i> or they might even still have the little oil and vinegar sets that used to be on each and every restaurant table when I was a little boy and let you do all the work yourself.

Flanner is right. Abroad can be a beastly place, with all sorts of strange ideas about food.

We usually go self-catering on holiday, so spend many hours in European supermarkets. It is odd what one can, and cannot, find.

In both Spain and Italy, it is hard to find salad dressing - vinaigrette already mixed. Most bread in Tuscany is hard and dry. Italian supermarkets have a poor selection of cheese compared with France or Britain. Fresh milk can be difficult to find, especially fresh skimmed milk. Fresh cream is also unavailable in Italy.

Many continental supermarkets, especially in tourist areas, have a selection of British foods - marmite, baked beans, brown sauce, etc. What is missing are what one thinks of as staples in one's own country. The big French hypermarkets are perhaps the exception, especially for baked goods and dairy.

It's nearly as bad as trying to find a proper strawberry in California.

chartley - your line about strawberries in California is so true.

Just came back from a week there, jonesing for fruit that tasted of something, anything! The strawberries (whilst beautiful) were the size of apples and had next to no flavour. The apples were the size of melons and had all the flavour of the pillow in my room (don't ask. A man has to eat).

As others have said nuke (well I'm paraphrasing) "when in Rome..."

If you are in NY this week, the strawberries have been just extraordinary.

I wish I were...

Coming back to the drizzle and cold of Kent after a week in 80º+ temperatures, certainly makes you re-evaluate your life choices.

Flanny writes:
In much the same way you get American restaurants to serve you toast at breakfast that isn't impregnated with a ton of butter, tea made in a pot with boiling water or bacon that's not nuked to a barbecue pellet and covered in that syrupy muck.

Here is the translation in English:
Toast, butter on the side or lightly buttered
Tea, please make the water boiling hot
Bacon done lightly (no syrup, which most places do not do any way.

And "Please do not spit on my eggs for being such a prig."

The strawberries in the Farmer's Markets in the Northeast US are really good this year. Not so the supermarket, giant versions.

Oh no, not breakfast wars again - more devisive that bad teeth, world wars, socialised medicine and gun control :-)

And why I am here, could somebody explain "Canadian bacon" and "Irish bacon" - I saw both on menus in NY and wondered about differences.

And why I am here, could somebody explain "Canadian bacon" and "Irish bacon" - I saw both on menus in NY and wondered about differences.
______
It is all about if the server is an illegal immigrant or not.

Your experience with "acid" is quite the opposite from mine. I find the salads to be uniformly "perfectly" dressed, and usually the reason is that they use the "correct" (but more than I usually dare!!) amount of olive oil. DEElicious. I hope you can get it solved, however.

I do agree that in the absence of a medical condition, perhaps backed up with some sort of printed card, "having it your way" is not a concept that most French, bless their hearts, can understand. You are in my restaurant, you will eat what you are served. If you don't like it, you are welcome to eat elsewhere. And I don't necessarily disagree.

Canadian bacon and Irish bacon are both back bacons and are usually (always?) cured not smoked; US bacon is pork belly, cured and smoked. Trader Joe's has some cured but not smoked American style bacon and maybe smoked but not cured -- I wasn't paying too much attention.

kerouac - i think you underestimate your fellow countrymen/women. having travelled quite a lot in France with DS who has an aversion to vinaigrette, but enjoys his salads, we came up with the following:

le salade s'il vous plait, mais sans vinaigrette - il ne le peux pas manger. [sorry for the poor grammar, but it worked!]

most of the time, they looked a bit sideways at him, but followed our instructions. ditto with cheese sauces, which he would not have liked.

saying he wasn't able to eat it was better we found than saying that he didn't eat it.

I understand that the French understand that medical concerns may influence what one can eat or drink, while personal preference is seen as being rather self-centred.

Trying to find the correct wording after many years of French lessons, I came up with the sentence "Je ne support pas la vinaigrette", perhaps with a "malheureusement" at the beginning. Maybe Kerouac can say if this correct (using "correct" in the French sense)?