Pronounced Differences

Just inside the restaurant door were two middle-age women, hands folded, sitting at a small table with rolls of red raffle tickets and neatly stacked name tags.

“Bon soir,” said one of the women. “Are you with the Alliance Francaise?”

“Yes!” said Jan.

“No we’re not,” I said.

“We’re not?”

“No.”

“Oh, sorry,” Jan said, hurrying away from the two confused women. Paige, who at 15 thinks her parents are strange anyway, shook her head and contemplated her clogs as we walked into Mistral’s main dining room. The area had buttery walls, a red carpet and an eclectic mix of prints of modern paintings on the walls. A graceful, bilingual waiter ushered us past an accordion player, seated on a wooden chair, to the back room and a table next to a gas fireplace with a dancing blue flame.

Next to us was a round, country-style table with five women and one man. In the back was a long table running the length of the room with 12 or 13 people, mostly women. Everyone wore name tags and chattered in French.

“Would you like le Beaujolais or perhaps to have a look at the wine list?” asked our waiter.

“Oh, le Beaujolais,” Jan said, accenting the “le.” “That’s why we’re here, mais oui?”

Paige sank a bit in her seat and looked at me imploringly. “I wish Mom wouldn’t pretend she can speak French,” she said.

I smiled.

“Un verre ou la bouteille?” said the waiter, playing along.

“Oh, la bo-tay de Beaujolais,” said Jan. The waiter bowed and departed.

“It’s ‘boo-tay,’ ” Paige whispered.

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you didn’t. You said ‘bo-tay.’ Like ‘bow.’ It’s ‘boo-tay.’ Like ‘boo.’ ”

“Well he seemed to understand me just fine, mia piccolo Principessa.”

“Mom, that’s Italian.”

“Whatever.”

One of the women from the round table came over. She wore a red silk blouse with a name tag that said Claudina Hastings. “Bon soir,” she said, leaning over our table. “Ca va?” Then she spoke rapidly in French, looking first at me and then at Jan and finally at Paige. None of us had any idea what she was saying. “Are you with the Alliance Francaise?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “We came for the special Beaujolais Nouveau dinner.”

“Us too,” said Claudina, sweeping her arm to include the dozen people lined up at the buffet table helping themselves to pate, little quiches and something gelatinous that, I was afraid, looked like head cheese. She apologized for intruding on us. “I just wanted to make you feel welcome,” she said, apologizing for a second time. “It was very rude of me.”

“It es no problemo,” Jan said.

“Mom, that’s Spanish.”

Jan reached for the basket of bread and tore off a chunk of baguette.

“Do you speak French?” Claudina asked Paige.

“Spanish,” she said. “But I want to go to Paris.”

“Oh you should,” said Claudina. “You would love it.”

“I know.”

“No, really. Every young girl should spend a year in France. To learn the language.”

“I know.”

“The Alliance Francaise in Paris is a wonderful school to learn French.”

“That’s what my dad says.”

“‘Well, he is right.”

Claudina apologized for the third time before going back to her table for a glass of Beaujolais and then making the rounds of the room. Our waiter brought our bottle of wine but hurriedly left again when he realized he did not have a wine opener. A minute later, Jacques de Quillien, one of Mistral’s owners, came by and opened the wine. “This is a good one,” he said, pouring a taste for Jan.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a fun wine, light and fruity tasting. In France there is always a lot of hoopla made of drinking the year’s first Beaujolais Nouveau, which, by law, cannot be released until 12:01 a.m. on a certain day in November. It used to be that bistros in France would rush to be the first to serve the new wine, but now everyone does it at the same time so the French use it as an excuse to have parties and celebrate the first tangible results of that year’s grape harvest. It is, I suppose, the French equivalent of the German’s Oktoberfest (and you can make what you will of the differences as, I’m sure, the French would).

We sipped our Beaujolais and pulled apart the baguette while waiting for the long line at the buffet to shorten. Our waiter came back and asked us if, for the main dish, we wanted the roasted leg of lamb or the chicken a la Provencale.

“Oh, the pollo for me,” Jan said.

“Mom, you’re back to Spanish,” Paige said.

“It’s also Italian, mon petite Principessa.”

Paige banged the palm of her hand on her forehead.

“I’ll have the gee-got de ag-new,” I said.

“You two are embarrassing,” Paige said. “It’s pronounced ‘ah-NYOH,’ not Spiro ‘AG-new.’ ”

“Whatever,” Jan and I said at the same time.

“I think you are not with the Alliance Francaise, no?” said our waiter.

“No, we’re not,” said Jan. “But we love France.”

Our waiter raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

The lone gentleman at Claudina’s table ordered another bottle of Beaujolais, and then Claudina got the accordion player and asked him to play a song that I did not recognize. The people at the other tables started singing along, their faces red, their voices heavy and slightly slurred. Claudina clapped her hands after the song and spoke hurriedly in French to the accordion player, her hand on his shoulder as she did so, and he began playing an Edith Piaf song, “Pigalle.”

The French always get very emotional when they hear old Edith Piaf songs. At first, Claudina danced in front of the gas fireplace by herself, singing the words to the song, and then a woman from the long table started dancing with her. They waltzed each other around the room, singing the lyrics they could remember, humming the rest. Some of the other women got up and danced with each other as well. When the song ended, I thought the women were going to cry, but they did not. Instead they just hugged each other.

“I am sorry, but this is a song we never hear anymore,” Claudina said to us. She was flushed and smiling but looked a little sad.

“It was lovely,” I said.

“Yes, tres, tres bonito,” said Jan, toasting her with a glass of wine.

Head down, Paige intently cut at her chicken, as if we were not there. Most of the Alliance Francaise diners were just getting their lamb or chicken as we finished up our dessert of sweet caramelized apples in a puff pastry with little dollops of whipped cream on top. As we were getting up to leave, Claudina came over. “You see how happy we are to celebrate a little French event together. I hope we did not spoil your dinner.”

“Au contraire,” Jan said.

“You really should live in France for a while,” Claudina said to Paige.

“I’d go tomorrow if I could,” Paige said, smiling.

In the car, Paige was silent. “It would be kind of fun to go to Paris, wouldn’t it?” Jan said.

“Yeah,” Paige said. “As long as you two stayed home.”

I started to hum “Pigalle.” Jan began to sing, making the words up as she went. For the rest of the drive, Paige pretended to sleep.

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David Lansing’s column is published on Saturdays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.