How to Order Coffee in French Like a True Parisian
Learning how to order food and drinks in French is practically essential if you’re planning on taking a trip to France.
On Parisian Sunday mornings, my friends and I would often sit on the terrace of a café near the Marché d’Aligre sipping espressos and noshing on croissants.
Café means “coffee” in French, but you’ll need to know more to get the full French coffee shop experience like I did!
You’ll need to know where you’ll be enjoying your drink, what specific type of coffee you want and whether you’d like a simple croissant, a different kind of bakery delight or a more “American-style” breakfast or brunch.
Keep reading to learn how to order coffee in French—and how to say all the other choices that come along with it.
Contents
- Getting Coffee in a French Café
- How to Order Coffee and Drinks in French
- Coffee Pairings: Ordering Pastries and Food in French
- Beyond Coffee: Brunch and Breakfast Options
- French Morning Traditions
- And one more thing...
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Getting Coffee in a French Café
The first choice you have when entering a typical French bar or café is whether you want to stand at the bar for your espresso and croissant, take a seat inside or sit outside on the terrace. (If it’s chilly out, many Parisian cafés have heat lamps.)
This is not Starbucks; don’t order at the bar and then think you can take your coffee and go sit somewhere. The prices are quite different depending on your selection.
Standing at the bar is the cheapest option, while the most expensive (usually your drinks cost about 50% more) is to sit on the terrace. Here’s what the options are called:
- au comptoir / au bar — at the counter/at the bar
- (assis) à l’intérieur — (seated) inside
- (assis) à l’extérieur / en terrasse — (seated) outside/on the terrace
There is (now, thankfully) no smoking inside restaurants and bars in France, by the way.
How to Order Coffee and Drinks in French
Your next task is to order your drinks. Your breakfast options in France will typically include:
| French | English |
|---|---|
| un café | a coffee; in France, this means an espresso |
| un expresso | also an espresso; if you look foreign, waiters (especially in touristy areas) may use this word to clarify that that's what you should expect |
| un café au lait | a coffee with milk |
| un café latte | a coffee with a little steamed milk |
| un macchiato | steamed milk with a little coffee |
| un café allongé | a longer espresso |
| un café court / café serré | a short espresso; French espresso usually isn't any good, but if you're in a place that takes coffee seriously, this is what you'll want to order for an intense, Italian-like experience |
| un café filtre / café américain | brewed coffee/black coffee, but you can't actually order this in most places in France; you will instead usually be served diluted espresso (un café allongé) |
| un cappuccino | coffee with hot milk and steamed milk |
| un café crème | a cream coffee |
| un mocha | a mocha |
| un frappé | a frappé |
| un chocolat chaud | a hot chocolate |
| un smoothie | a smoothie |
| un lait frappé | a milkshake |
| un verre de lait | a glass of milk |
| un thé | a tea |
| un thé noir | a black tea |
| un thé vert | a green tea |
| un thé à la menthe | a mint tea |
| un thé à la camomille | a chamomile tea |
| une infusion de fruits | a fruit infusion |
| une infusion | an infusion (i.e., caffeine-free) |
| un jus de fruits | a fruit juice |
| un jus d'orange | an orange juice |
| un jus de pamplemousse | a grapefruit juice |
| un jus d'apricôt | an apricot juice |
| un jus de pomme | an apple juice |
| un jus de poire | a pear juice |
| un café-rhum | a coffee with rum |
| une limonade | a lemonade |
Simply stating the name of the thing you want is the most common way to order.
If you want to be extra polite, you can tack on a s’il vous plaît (please) at the end. A few other phrases to know are:
- Je prends… — I’ll take…
- merci — thank you
- sans sucre — without sugar
Coffee Pairings: Ordering Pastries and Food in French
Le petit déjeuner (breakfast) in France is usually coffee and a croissant if you’re in a bar, although at home many French people have been converted to American cereals, which saves a morning trip down to the bakery.
Even the simplest dive bars will have a basket of croissants out on the bar in the morning, and possibly chocolate croissants:
- un croissant — a croissant
- un pain au chocolat / chocolatine — a chocolate croissant; chocolatine is the word used in the South
If you go to a bakery in the morning, you’ll have more options to order from:
| French | English |
|---|---|
| une baguette | a long loaf of bread |
| un pain complet | a loaf of whole grain bread |
| une part de flan | a slice of flan |
| un canelé | a tiny cake with a custard center |
| une tartelette aux framboises | a small raspberry tart |
| un pain aux raisins | a sweet raisin roll |
| une brioche | a very light, sweet bread made with eggs and butter |
| un éclair au chocolat | a chocolate éclair (pastry with cream filling) |
| un chausson aux pommes | an apple pastry/tart |
| un croissant aux amandes | a very sweet almond croissant |
| une tarte aux fruits | a fruit tart |
| un chausson aux pommes | an apple turnover (a pastry filled with apples) |
| une madeleine | a madeleine (a small sponge cake) |
| une chaussons aux cerises | a cherry turnover |
| un macaron | a macaron (meringue sandwich treat) |
| un flan | a custard tart |
| un pain perdu | French toast (fried bread soaked in eggs and milk/cream) |
| un mille-feuille | a mille-feuille (puff pastry dessert) |
| un gâteau au chocolat | a chocolate cake |
| un pain d'épices | a gingerbread |
| une tarte Tatin | a Tarte Tatin (pastry with caramelized fruit) |
| un fraisier | a strawberry cake |
| un gâteau basque | a Basque cake (cake filled with cream and black cherry jam) |
Some cafés offer a few additional options for hungrier patrons:
| French | English |
|---|---|
| une omelette | an omelette |
| un croque-monsieur | a grilled ham and cheese sandwich |
| un croque-madame | a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top |
| un quiche | a quiche |
| un sandwich au jambon | a ham sandwich |
| un sandwich au fromage | a cheese sandwich |
| un sandwich au poulet | a chicken sandwich |
| un sandwich végétarien | a vegetarian sandwich (a sandwich without meat) |
| un panini | a panini |
| un burger | a burger |
Beyond Coffee: Brunch and Breakfast Options
It’s difficult to stretch the typical French breakfast into a 20-25 euro affair, but some brave French cafés have attempted to take up the New York tradition with le brunch .
This usually means some sort of set menu with the bread and pastry options, coffee and French orange juice, plus:
| French | English |
|---|---|
| des confitures | jams |
| du jambon | some ham |
| du fromage | some cheese |
| un œuf à la coque | a soft-boiled egg |
| une salade de fruits | a fruit salad |
Perhaps you’re hoping for something a little more familiar?
I love French breakfast, but I get it. Sometimes one misses home.
Cafés in touristy areas of France have learned to cater to Anglos, so you may be able to order breakfast américain (American breakfast) options in some places. There are also a few American-style diners cropping up, such as the famous Breakfast in America.
If you want to attempt to order your American favorites, you can ask for:
| French | English |
|---|---|
| deux œufs | two eggs |
| des œufs brouillés | scrambled eggs |
| avec bacon | with bacon |
| avec saucisse | with sausage |
| un bagel | a bagel |
| pommes de terre sautées | fried potatoes |
| crêpes américaines | pancakes; French crêpes are much lighter and thinner—and super tasty, especially in Brittany |
| un yaourt | yogurt |
| un bol de céréales | a bowl of cereal |
French Morning Traditions
There are a couple more morning traditions to know about in France.
One is the soupe à l’oignon (onion soup); you may have thought of this as fancy food, but it’s really quite a simple dish. If a house party is still rocking, making onion soup in the wee hours of the morning is the traditional French way to keep things going just a little longer.
Also, if a gentleman has had a nice time with a new lady friend, it’s customary for him to say this the next morning:
Je cherche les croissants — I’ll fetch the croissants
The lady can thus stay comfortably in bed, or else scour the apartment for evidence of the gentleman’s ex, as per her wishes.
You can see more French traditions (morning and otherwise) by watching authentic French media, such as the videos available in the FluentU program.
FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.
You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.
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This information and vocabulary should get your day off to an excellent start in France, whatever your needs for caffeine and sustenance.
I’m not going to tell you the best breakfast spot in Paris (because there’s not just one…), but I will say that if you bike around the Marché d’Aligre until you wipe out, that café in front of you may well serve an excellent croque-monsieur.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
And one more thing...
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FluentU has a wide variety of great content, like interviews and web series, as you can see here:
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You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used.
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