We realise it is almost time for lunch and the French don't mess with that.
His office itself seems a fitting symbol of French Touch, a mess of styles new and old thrown together, cut, flipped and rehashed into something original, a sort of finely tuned musical bricolage.
The Americans got themselves into this mess, against French advice: they must dig themselves out.
"France's little Iraq" is what one French observer calls the mess in the former colony.Many Ivorians believe the French were behind the rebellion two years ago that still cuts the country in two.
The French, too, like to mess around with cases: one of their biggest energy firms calls itself EDF except in its logo, when it is eDF, with the lower-case "e" made the same size as the two capitals.
Out of interest we ordered a side-dish called 'Putine' which the Canadian chef seems to have brought with him: a meal-in-one mess of French fries, chorizo, cheese, jalapeno peppers and gravy.
DetoutcoeurLimousin declared this "a mix of two equally delicious, classic desserts from both sides of the Channel; the British Eton Mess and French Mont Blanc", which ultimately proved too hard to beat.
Back then, Porteños, as residents are called, made great snacks: fried empanadas stuffed with shrimp and cheese, for example, or the glorious bar dish known as chorrillana, a rock-heavy, grease-slick mess of French fries, sautéed onions, chopped meat and fried egg.
Overtaxed, overregulated, the French economy is a mess.
Of course Vivendi is in no position to make any more acquisitions; it was Messier's $100 billion shopping binge that got the French conglomerate into this mess in the first place.
