Frog and Rosbif

We had brunch with Wally on Sunday at The Frog and Rosbif English pub.

I've only recently learned from Guillaume that "rosbif" ("roas'beef") is what the French call Brits. It's their answer to the nickname "frog". Hence, the name of the pub. Of course, ever since Guillaume learned that David is English, he calls him "rosbif", and me "wife of rosbif".

Anyway, we'd never been to The Frog and Rosbif, but it didn't take us long to like it. First thing, we were greeted by a friendly Swedish waiter who breathed a big sigh of relief when we didn't want to speak French. While we waited for Wally, he hung around and chatted, asking us about work and our experiences in France. A friendly waiter in Paris? I wanted to hug him.

We were one of the first customers there, so we had our choice of cozy wooden booths. Dave ordered a house brewed beer, and we poured over the menu, excitedly pointing out familiar items. English breakfast! Hamburgers! Bacon!

The waiter strolled by for another chat, and we learned that the pub plays English premier football matches regularly. Excellent, excellent.

When Wally turned up we each ordered a giant Full English Breakfast. It wasn't as good as the English breakfast we had in England, naturally, and twice as expensive, also naturally, but filling and tasty nonetheless.

We did something fairly impressive for us and had our brunch conversation in about 75% French. We're very lucky that Wally is patient and speaks slowly and clearly when we don't catch things the first time. He also teaches us street French, like slang and common expressions we don't hear at work.

Anyway, it was a good brunch, and Dave and I have a new pub we're fond of. Wally says it's for tourists, but it's about time we stop pretending that we're not really just long-term tourists ourselves.