Parisienne cool, non?

I have had all of two french lessons and do not profess to be anywhere close to conversational yet. Far from it. But when you're out in a cafe amongst the classy Frenchies doing their afternoon cafe express or vin rouge, you can't exactly ask the waitress for your order in a strong Aussie accent. It's embarrassing, and what's more, you want to feel as cool as the waitress in her all-black-skinny attire. So, in my attempt at being Parisienne cool this weekend, I fell straight into my first big blunder, in a St Germain cafe at about 6 o'clock on Saturday evening. And to make it even worse, I actually thought I had done it and had successfully placed my order in French, in the right accent, to the waitress of cool.

Nursing my glass of vin rouge (red wine for those not following) I decided some peanuts would complement my glass of pinot. I motioned the waitress over with a subtle and delicate wave of my hand and smiled at her as I said politely, "Je vudrais noisette s'il vous plait". At first the pretty little thing weakly smiled and said "pardon, noisette?" Thinking that she just didn't understand my accent, I over pronounced "noisette" to her a second time. This time she got it. "Agh." I was content, I did it, I ordered the nuts. About five minutes later, she came back with an espresso coffee and placed it down in front of me. I couldn't even explain to her that that was not what I had ordered. The table next to me giggled quietly. Oh merde! Luckily my friend from Montreal who speaks fluent French asked the waitress what the confusion was. Seems in my attempt to order the measly bowl of peanuts I had ordered an espresso with a drop of cream in it, what they call here, a cafe noisette because of the dark hazelnut colour of the coffee. Pretty took the coffee away in a huff. I did get my peanuts and some olives. And, when the bill came, I paid for the hazelnut coffee. I was not going to argue. What I should have said (which I now know thanks to Babel Fish) was "Je vudrais les arachides satisfont". Next time I'll skip the peanuts. I know how to order vin rouge thank god.

Merci,

Mel