The naked steak
I was working in a hotel in St Malo, France, during my degree. Having heard other waitresses give orders to the chef for steak cooked in different ways, I was quite happy to have a go without checking my dictionary so I asked for un steak Ă poil. The chef found it highly amusing and explained I had mispronounced the order I'd heard for un steak Ă poĂŞle, meaning cooked in the frying pan, and actually asked for 'a naked steak'!
Sent by: Amy
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I think that although poil and ±è´Çê±ô±ð are pronounced the same the phrases are à poil meaning naked and à la ±è´Çê±ô±ð meaning pan-fried. The mistake was therefore to say à ±è´Çê±ô±ð which isn't used and sounds like à poil. Somehow it's not as funny when you spell it out!
Editor's note: Good point. Also ±è´Çê±ô±ð is not pronounced the same way everywhere in France ...
À poil, as in Spanish a pelo, meaning you're only 'wearing your hair', being stark naked.
Poil and ±è´Çê±ô±ð is the same (pwal), not exactly especially in Brittany (St Malo) where pan can be pronounced PWALE or PWAL.
Interestingly enough, if you ordered a steak in Germany to be done Englisch, it means rare. (Although they share the French disdain for our cooking!)
At a restaurant in Paris I ordered pommes anglaises ou pommes de terre à l'anglaise from the menu. I was curious. We were brought the finest potatoes I have ever eaten. I have never seen anything similar in the UK. I wonder now if they had been steamed somehow.
Bleu does not mean "steamed"! Bleu means "very rare". It is thickly cut steak very briefly fried at very high temperature, then allowed to rest for a few minutes in a warm oven. Cut across and you will see that only about 1/8th inch outside is browned - the rest is "raw".
I like my steak bleu and had a lot of difficulty persuading a French waiter that I meant what I said. He kept saying: ce n'est pas possible parce que vous êtes anglaise!!!, "it can't be, you're English!"
Since the pronunciation for "poil" and "±è´Çê±ô±ð" is the same ("pwal"), I think the chef was simply pulling your leg!
'English steak' probably refers to the fact that French people joke about the fact that the British enjoy their meat very well done like semelle de chaussure, shoe sole.
Indeed ŕ la poęle is the full phrase Amy must have overheard, but she repeated ŕ poęle which is a homophone of ŕ poil (naked) or ŕ poils (with hairs)!
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