One thing that has caught us off guard over here is the naming system for courses in restaurants. We were in a nice restaurant in Blue Hill, Maine, and had some trouble deciphering the menu. it offered both appetizers and entrées, with no sign of main courses.
The dishes listed in the entrées sounded rather large… but everything over here is rather large. Everything. And almost everyone, but hey… I’ll probably be part of that slur before we’re done here.
I asked our incredibly friendly, cheery and personal space invading host to explain, and to her credit she did explain, with no sign of indignation, what must be the equivalent of asking whether “dessert” is meant to be the “pudding course.” We were told that we could choose to have the appetizers as well, or just the entrées. We nodded like we understood and later there was food.
We’ve seen the same thing many times since then, and so it led to some research. Wikipedia tells us that, indeed, North America is unique in its interpretation of the word. However, I’m coming to appreciate that North America is just unique. Full stop. Or should that be “period”?
Ironically, the "entrées" here are enormous – far bigger than normal main sizes in the rest of the world.
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