Silly food question

Arugula called 'Ruccheta' or translated as 'rocket' there is common as is mache. And you have my sympathies for having to concern yourself about lettuce. I hope your picky eater doesn't make the trip a misery for everyone else.

They'll also serve "spring mix" that we find here. Iceberg is in grocery stores nowadays as an expensive, exotic product, très americain, but I've never seen it in restaurants.

Edit: to pick up on conversations further down this thread, if dressing is a problem, be aware that the salads come already dressed. You need to say "sans sauce, s'il vous plaît" or "pas de sauce, svp". Raised one like that--been there, done it.

I don't remember particular greens, just that the salads we had featured a mix, and didn't include iceberg lettuce. They were delicious. Your picky eater might look for various lettuces in a big English-French dictionary, or use Google Translate, so he/she can make requests to waiters.

A garden salad will include just about any green leaf from the garden. . . . Lettuce plus all sorts of other leaves. A few types besides those already mentioned.

Sucrine, chene, Batavia, mache, laitue, frisee, croquante, betterave, epinard

John if the person in your group is this picky they really are going to struggle in Europe . Everything will likely be just a little different . I was a very picky eater as a child and was sent to stay with my grandmother in France several times for a couple of months each time . My grandmother really had a hard time with me , she wrote home to my parents in Canada ( back then people didn't phone long distance as often ) that "all she eats is ham and soup " . And that wasn't far wrong , ham was the only meat I recognized as being the same as at home , the steaks tasted funny , the chicken was cooked funny , the milk was a horror, the cheese was weird , etc . Soup and ham for two months lol , actually not , my grandmother made me try lots of things and I got over my Canadian pickiness by the time I wa 10 or so !

If your picky person is a child then my advice is don't worry , you're only going for a few weeks at most , let them eat what they want , it might just be ham and soup !!! Lol

If it's an adult , tell them to grow the hell up . Lol

You might get salad made up just butter lettuce, which I've had numerous times there.

One of my first times having "steak frites" was on the first trip to France. The dish was brought to me, I cut through the steak, saw that the center had a strip, a bit more a sixteenth of an inch that was pure red, the rest of the steak top and bottom was cooked minus this red strip. My immediate thought was to send it back, was horrified at seeing it this way, but luckily my girl friend talked me out of this notion, (you don't know the language, you'll cause a scene, etc..most importantly, she thought,, you'll insult the cook by sending it back, and nothing's going happen to you in eating the steak like this.) She was right. I was easily persuaded, nothing happened after eating the steak. I just marveled at how steak could be cooked with one strip through the center still red.

Normally, you'll get "loose-leaf, curly leaf green lettuce".
http://www.homejardin.com/laitue_batavia/lactuca_sativa.html

You won't normally be given just a "green salad" - there will be meat, cheese and possibly the kitchen sink in there, too.

If your picky eater is really this picky, have him/her order something else instead.

Alas, picky eaters tend to be picky about an awful lot of things. I have a relative who managed to be dissatisfied with the food in Italy, of all places. (No, he wasn't on a low-carb diet.)

Good luck travelling with the picky eater. But there is always a baguette with ham and cheese on every street corner.

Heck, I never know what kind of greens I'm going to get when ordering a salad here in the States!

I think he/she is just going to have to roll with it. If it's a mix and there's something in it they don't like, eat around it. I'm not big on curly endive so I just leave those pieces. Yep, a lot of food is just going to be different so best to adjust the expectations. He/she will certainly not starve. If they do, they're too picky to travel!

Someone mentioned frites? Lordy, there's nothing like the frites in France, Belgium, the Netherlands... !!! They are a very common meal inclusion, and I don't believe I've ever had a stale or cold one. Yum.

Thanks for all the good information. It's going to be an interesting adventure, to be sure but we'll get through it.

Hi John, I see you've received a lot of replies on this silly question! Just wondering about the discussion between you and your friend that prompted you to ask. Maybe you could institute a "no grumps" policy like Rick's. Good luck!

Just remind everyone that they've spent thousands of dollars to experience new things!

Our experience with salads is that it covers a very wide range of stuff including corn or other items not common to the typical salad in the US. AND do not expect salad dressings common to the US. It is rare for anything over than vinegar and olive oil. I have heard others requesting - demanding - blue cheese, thousand island, ranch. "What ?? You don't French dressing in France !!!! "

It's roquette, not "ruccheta."

If one were to order pizza topped with salad, it likely would be all roquette (arugula) dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.

If one were to order une salade lyonnaise, it most likely will be composed of frisée, with lardons, croutons, and a poached egg, though sometimes mâche is used.

Other than that, salads are pretty wide ranging in composition and contain whatever greens are good and available at that time and location.

My first salad in Paris was a mix of greens, mainly butter lettuce, with chicken and a variety of other veggies and at first I was perplexed because the waiter brought me a kind of little ceramic pouring jug--I thought perhaps it was my dressing, but no, it was the wine I'd ordered. The dressing was a light mustardy vinaigrette and very tasty, I don't miss the dressing options at all when I'm in Europe.

Most salades already come with dressing poured over them already.
It's a sort of white vinaigrette, with a little mustard involved.
If you want any other dressing, you can ask for the little set up with salt, pepper and oil and vinegar.

Yeah -- ruchetta is Italian. Sorry. It always gets translated to 'rocket' which is not the word in American English and confuses American who have no encountered it before.

Let the picky eater go to Mc Donalds if they are not the sort of picky eater who copes with whatever the menu is without whining.

There are salad composees.. they have a lot of stuff on them.. ie hard boiled eggs, green beans, corn ( yuck) , lardons,.. it can be a variety of things.. but a GREEN SALAD served after the main plate is usually just greens dressed with a vinaigrette.

And I love ordering a ham and cheese baquette.. but a picky person may be unhappy to discover the cheese will not be American slices, velveeta or cheddar..

Ooh la la...If the contents of a green salad is this troublesome I can't imagine what the rest of your dining experiences will be like! Tell the picky eater to not order a green salad (period). They rarely come with a meal so this person would have to go out of his/her way to receive an undesired salad.

Like others have mentioned, if your PE does order a salad ask for it with sans "dressing" because in French restaurants I have NEVER had a salad dressing choice, they just come dressed with a delicious oil/vinegar or lemon seasoned fresh dressing that is wonderful. I remember the first time my brother in law visited us in California and asked for French dressing on a salad...I've never seen that orange stuff in a bottled labled French dressing they have in the Midwest.

Adapt, adapt, adapt or order "safe" foods. Good luck!

John, good luck with your picky eater! My picky eater loves Asian food and we have had some wonderful Asian meals in France. By the end of the trip, he did wear me down and I consented to brownies for breakfast. If pickiness extends beyond salads, I recommend buying fruit at markets. I really think your picky eater will be surprised by how many good things there are to eat in France!

For those of you that offered helpful advice and anecdotes, thank you very much.

For those that offered snarky comments and rude assumptions, thank you as well as they demonstrated whose opinions/suggestions were worthwhile.

It's really rare to see a "salade verte" offered on a menu, these days.
You can ask for one, but you might not get it - because there isn't a way to charge you for it at the register.

In moderately fancy restaurants, sometimes you will see a green salade offered after the main dish, but only in restaurants serving many, many courses.

I don't think people meant to be snarky -- well who am I to try to ascertain others' motives. . . but honestly I think it's more sympathy -- because we have all been there, either ourselves or with a traveling companion where the pickiness (which you brought up yourself as the reason for your question) can indeed have the potential to cause grumpiness to descend. I can remember my first non-iceberg lettuce salad when I was in my early 20s living in Washington, DC: I ordered a salad and it came with I don't know, arugula and whatever, which I found very bitter-tasting. I was pretty upset. Now I have adapted, and enjoy more varieties, although I still don't love the bitterest of the greens (but at least now I know what to avoid and can do so if I choose; part of the challenge and difficulty of traveling is not really being in a position to make those choices because you don't know the exact word or what some made-up word that the restaurant uses to describe their salad is, so you often will not be 100% sure that you're getting only what you want until it's arrived on your table -- which can be frustrating when you're tired and hungry and are spending money).

I don't mean to overstate it, it's just that food issues can definitely be a drag on a trip, and we all have stories of either what we've endured or what others have made us endure. You're kind and thoughtful in trying to think ahead for your friend or family member; I hope they will appreciate your efforts and try, on their part, to be a little more flexible too.

(For stories, I offer this one: two girlfriends of mine visited me in Paris some 12 years ago; one had a 9 or 10-year-old daughter who basically wouldn't eat anything except pizza and pasta. My second friend, who's a bit of a foodie, and who came for basically just a long weekend, had to suffer through the daughter's eating restrictions her first night in Paris by going to a pizza joint.

The second night, the friends had had a long-time goal of going to Willi's Wine Bar for a nice evening. I tried to gently suggest that we get a babysitter to stay with the daughter, as it wasn't likely to be to her taste, but the mom wasn't having it. So they schlepped around all day, and we met up that evening to go to the restaurant.

Lo and behold, the mom and daughter couldn't find anything the daughter could eat on the menu. The mom had thought, well, they'll have some pasta in the back, they can just make her some cheese and pasta. Well guess what: small kitchens only have on hand what they're offering on their menu, and they literally didn't have any pasta. We ordered I don't remember what, except for I had a salad with some bacon on it. We found that the daughter liked the bacon, so I was giving her my bacon so she'd have at least something to eat.

EXCEPT FOR: In passing her the bacon, it FELL INTO MY PURSE. In other words, the only thing she would eat in the restaurant had been rendered inedible. She burst into tears, her mother was furious and got up for them to leave the restaurant. It was their last night in Paris -- if they left then, what kind of memory was that going to be!?!! Somehow we persuaded them to stay, and now of course it is all a funny memory.)

But it just goes to show the weight that food issues can have when traveling -- when you're already perhaps a bit tired and edgy. I don't tell this story to say that you will necessarily encounter anything like this - just to underline that we all come from a place of sympathy because most of us have been there, and we wish you the best!!!

Oy, Kim, what a story...but I couldn't help laughing at the picture of wayward pork in your purse!

Absolutely NO snark was meant on my part, just sympathy for the potential of similar difficulties. Hope that all goes well!

Fabulous post, Kim. I agree that it didn't appear people were snarky but were reliving their own experiences and sympathizing. Food is so personal--literally and figuratively.

Do you remember how Calvin Trillin, who wrote all those wonderful books on restaurants way before the foodie movement existed, always had to have a fresh bagel from a certain bakery for his five-year old daughter to eat while the rest of the family enjoyed their Chinese meal in NY Chinatown.

"You won't normally be given just a "green salad"

I disagree with chexbres. I just got back from 17 days in Paris and and ate at cafés & restaurants lunch & dinner every day, most every menu had "Salade Verte" (green salad - lettuce only with vinaigrette)... since this is one of my favorite things to eat in France (I don't eat meat or cheese) I ordered it with every meal. If it wasn't on the menu (rare) I'd ask the server if it was possible and they always said "Bien sur Madame!" (of course!).

It was always what we call "Spring Mix" lettuce... and always fresher than I've ever had here in SF.

Food pickiness can definitely cause issues when traveling. On one of their early trips with my nephew (3 at the time), my sister and parents had difficulty finding something he would eat because all he would accept was McDonald's or Pizza Hut. Unfortunately, they were in Paris and Amsterdam. While there is McDonald's in those places, they weren't so prevalent in the outlying small towns and rural parts of the countries. At her breaking point, and thinking her child would starve to death, my sister broke into tears and just wanted to go home. It sounds like a trivial thing, but at the time, tired and frustrated by both the situation and the child, it was far from trivial.

Nancy, another good reason to never introduce your children to fast food.

Travel really shakes up your habits and forces you to experience new things. I can't think of a better thing to help get a picky eater to broaden their taste buds.

Norma, he wasn't like that at all at home. I think everything else was just so strange to him that he freaked out. Then again, so did the adults.

Wow, that person is in for a hell of a ride from every French waiter! French salad consists of the basic "green salad" in which everything is green. The lettuce is similar to a Boston Bibb usually but this depends on the restaurant.

Assuming there are no food allergies or some health related reason for being picky, fastidious, then I have no patience with picky eaters on a trip, all the more so when it comes to France and Germany. If the locals don't find it objectionable, then the picky eater had better not either..

Nancy , so the child learned pickiness from his parents I guess .

I can't imagine living with such a picky child , or bursting into tears over a child thinking they would starve to death , my three never did, I temper with my ford tbeing a bit nervous he want eating enough ( my first time breast feeding ) and my doctor simply said " is he pooping " , I said "yes" so doctor then said " well if something is coming out something is going in " lol

Must be very tiring

Two of my kids would eat anything. The middle one was picky. She was served the same things with the same attitude. Sometimes they just end up that way.

She hated mustard and ketchup on her burgers. (OK, she does get that from me.) Once her grandparents ordered her a meal at McD's and did not order it plain. She was only about 6, and wouldn't eat it. They said she had to or she'd get nothing. She got pretty upset and her grandpa dug in his heels. Later he was complaining about it. I said, if someone put mustard and ketchup on your ice cream, would you eat it? Would you get angry if you were told you had to? All was well after that conversation.

Anyway, sometimes people are picky. That kid grew up to be fairly adventurous, although she's still stubborn.

Awww, c'mon. Some of the replies were clearly snarky. Nice of you to defend the posters as not meaning to be, but they were.
Minor point maybe, buried amidst the good advice and funny anecdotes, but the OP was stung by it and I can see why.

Show this thread to the picky eater. If this person wants the food, or maybe everything, to be like back home, with any luck he/she will be persuaded to stay home.

The salad-days discussion could include une salade composee, where everything from chicken gizzards to cheese is tossed together, i.e. composed. An excellent light lunch, good to eat, good for you.

I'm seeing a horrible scenario where your friend will be picky about everything else too, not just food.
I sincerely hope not for your sake.
You could give this person the job of finding the restaurants to eat in; you know, researching in advance.

My grandson went on his first trip with us to France when he was still four, ie, six weeks before his 5th birthday, never complained about the food, (as long as it wasn't spicy, hot sauce , etc. ) Likewise in 2011, when he was ten, just a month before turning 11, I was with him again in France, same thing, never complained of the food...a real good trooper, absolutely is no picky eater or is high maintenance.

Fred, Obviously your offspring are superior to mine.

I had one very picky and one who ate everything. But, the picky one broadened his palate and even worked a few years as a chef.

So just go with the flow people. No need for those with perfect children and grandchildren to judge those who don't have such perfection, nor in retrospect is it so difficult to live with and deal with a picky eater as long as you keep junk food out of the house, a few vitamins on hand, and a big stock of the one or two things the kid will eat. The twerps will grow up just fine.

I agree Bets, they'll grow up just fine - unless, of course, they don't. I've known adults who were so picky that they instructed waitstaff on what kinds of cookware could be used to prepare their food. Interestingly enough, the two who were the most extreme grew out of it over the course of time and found other ways to express their individuality.
I was a picky eater who was cured by peer pressure. For instance, I didn't want my friends, let alone my dates, to know that my pizza and pasta had to be made without tomato sauce, so I ate tomato sauce and discovered it could actually be pretty tasty.

My older kid is picky - but he has celiac disease and it was undiagnosed for several years before he was 6. So as a little kid food would cause pain so now he's hesitant to try new foods. Makes sense - and maybe other picky eaters suffer from an intolerance to some food and aren't sure what will digest comfortably. Some sympathy is called for. Except for jerks like my father in law who is picky (fine) and also criticizes what everyone else is eating because he thinks the food is gross (not ok!). I've had lectures on the digestive habits of shrimp and why they should not be eaten. Rule for picky eaters - eat it or not, ask servers politely for what you need (within reason), shut up about it to everyone else!