At an Italian restaurant for a friend's birthday, Iram (all people mentioned by their first name requested anonymity), 29, stared at her menu without really understanding it. One word stopped her: "Pancetta – what does that mean?" The same confusion arose with the names of Italian cheeses and pizza ingredients. "I don't know any of this," lamented the engineer, daughter of an automotive worker and a homemaker. As a child in Paris, she never went to restaurants – her mother, who is Pakistani, always prepared meals at home. The shock was brutal when she entered a "bourgeois environment" in her Paris engineering school's aeronautics program.
A new lifestyle, new cultural references – and a culinary lexicon to master. "I would hide my phone under the table to look up the name of an ingredient. I was afraid people would make fun of me," confided this social outlier. Sometimes, things went wrong. A few years ago, during a Saturday lunch with friends, she ordered a "faux-filet" thinking it was fish. "I felt really stupid." Now, the young engineer dares to ask the waiter when she's unsure about a dish. "My friends are used to it and understanding, but I always feel out of place. Very quickly, I don't feel like I belong there."
