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I saw this in a reddit post talking about restaurants on the coast of France and I just can't make heads or tails of the bolded excerpt:

J’ai graduellement déchanté en voyant les restaurants, lounges. T’as 200 tables serrées au maximum pour accepter le plus de gens possibles, des serveurs qui te regardent à peine, te demandent avec dédain ce que tu prend. Des que tu finis la commandes ils partent sans rien dire. Des fini ton plat te débarrassent illico et te ramènes l’addition pour te faire payer le plus vite possible et libérer la table… au prix ou tu paie bordel (10-12 euros le spritz 28 euros le menu). Et c’est pas un cas isolé, le même constat sur 3 restaurants dans deux villes balnéaires différentes.

I cannot parse this grammatically. It seems to have no subject, nothing about it makes sense. I understand the implication that they clear your plate immediately, but I can't figure out the "des fini" part. The conjugations of débarrasser and ramener don't match and don't seem to have a subject. It's very confusing.

So what's going on here? Is this sentence riddled with errors or is this some casual formulation that's just unfamiliar to me?

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  • Yes, there are spelling and punctuation errors in the Reddit post. I have corrected them in your quote; perhaps you'll find the whole thing easier to understand now.
    – Segorian
    Commented Jul 16 at 1:32
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    @Segorian I've undone your edit in this case because the errors are specifically part of the confusion here - correcting them sort of contradicts the purpose of the question, which is "are there errors here, or is there something I don't understand, or both?" The answer as it happens is "both" but if you take away the errors then it changes the answer.
    – temporary_user_name
    Commented Jul 16 at 2:17
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    The key to understand this is to read it aloud and parse what you hear, not what you read. This is true of many posts to French-speaking forums.
    – François Jurain
    Commented Jul 16 at 7:53
  • @FrançoisJurain You're right, but it probably works only if you're a native speaker.
    – XouDo
    Commented Jul 16 at 8:26
  • @XouDo to parse spoken language, native and foreign speakers strive with the same input. So, it probably works for any foreign speaker with the adequate listening skills.
    – François Jurain
    Commented Jul 16 at 8:45

3 Answers 3

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[...] des serveurs qui te regardent à peine, te demandent avec dédain ce que tu prends. Dès que tu finis la commande ils partent sans rien dire. Dès fini ton plat te débarrassent illico et te ramènent l’addition pour te faire payer le plus vite possible et libérer la table…

      Note: The italicized words have had their spelling corrected.

The subject is des serveurs (waiters). It is explicit in the first sentence, replaced by the pronoun ils in the second one and implicit in the third one.

Dès fini ton plat is a short way to say dès que ton plat est fini or dès que tu as fini ton plat.

The meaning is: As soon as you are done with your dish, they clear the table and bring1 up the bill for you to pay it and leave as fast as possible.

That meaning of dès is described this way in the TLFi:

DÈS, préposition
I.− Préposition. Indique le point à partir duquel une action commence, celle-ci étant toujours ponctuelle.
B.− [Le point de départ est un moment du temps]
3. Construction particulière
b) Familier, courant. Dès + substantif + participe passé (proposition participiale). Dès le seuil franchi. Synonyme. aussitôt, sitôt, une fois. Dès la nuit venue, Le prêtre et les flambeaux traversèrent la rue (Musset, Coupe, 1832, p. 325). Dès leur première culotte usée sur les bancs du collège (Zola, Œuvre,1886, p. 33). Dès la porte refermée, on s'est trouvés (...) face à face (Simonin, Touchez pas au grisbi,1953, p. 226):
    11. Quelle étrange maison! Trapue, massive, presque une citadelle. Château de légende qui offrait, dès le porche franchi, un abri aussi paisible, aussi sûr, aussi protégé qu'un monastère. Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes, 1939, p. 180.

The difference with the documented usage is the inversion substantive / past-participle.

Grevisse mentions this inversion stating it is exceptional but does not report it as incorrect:

Il est exceptionnel que le participe soit placé avant le nom et son déterminant : L'intérêt commençait brusquement DÈS FRANCHI LE RUISSEAU (Bosco, L'Âne Culotte, M. L. F., p. 27). Cet exemple montre bien que le participe n'a pas le rôle d'une épithète.

Grevisse and Goosse, Le bon usage, 14e édition, p 1324, 2007.

Here is exactly the same turn and a very similar customer feedback from Tripadvisor (bold mine in all quotations):

A éviter.
Hors de prix.
Vous êtes poussés vers la sortie dès avalé votre repas pingre et médiocre et votre expresso a 3,5 [€]
Plus jamais
Dommage c’était correct. C’était avant...

Fini and avalé are past participles, not adjectives.

Here are other examples where que j'ai or similar forms are implicit:

Merci de m’avoir éclairée. J’ai noté le lien et j’y vai[s] dès envoyé ce post. papillesetpupilles.fr

Dès reçu le paiement, livraison sous 3-5 jours (dépend la région) [conditions générales de vente, etoiluxe]

Le mois prochain, dès reçu le mandat, je t'enverrai deux cents francs. Raymond Radiguet, Lettres retrouvées, 1922.

Il avait rejoint la métropole en octobre 1914, dès reçu son ordre de mobilisation. Gavroche Thailande

Seriez-vous disposé à recevoir ce spectacle dont je vous joindrai le flyer et descriptif dès reçu votre mel. Joël Cudennec, 7alimoges.tv, 2017.

Les apprentis cuisiniers, de tous les âges, dès soufflée la cinquième bougie, s'affairent autour de la maîtresse de maison « master chef ». Ouest France, 2014

Dès gagné le gros lot du loto, j'amassais des échelles dans un vaste entrepot. Georges Elliautou, JE.EUX mininouvelles, 2019.

A similar construction here where que tu es is dropped (an implicit être is less unusual than avoir in this construction):

Ne manque pas dès arrivé à Charleville, lui écrit ce dernier, de me donner ta nouvelle adresse.
Pierre Petitfils, Verlaine, Biographie, 1981.

1 Note that ramener is derogatory, apporter would have been neutral.

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  • 1
    @temporary_user_name (&jlliagre) In speech & in a blog post Dès ton plat fini would be acceptable and understood, but having the adjective come first does sound weird.
    – None
    Commented Jul 16 at 5:44
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    In a written text I would expect Ton plat à peine fini, ils te débarrassent.
    – François Jurain
    Commented Jul 16 at 7:21
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    @jlliagre Can you say a bit more about how "ramener" is derogatory? That's a subtlety that would have gone completely over my head!
    – James Martin
    Commented Jul 16 at 11:10
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    @JamesMartin Ramener is not inherently derogatory but te ramènent has a slightly rude tone because the customer didn't ask for it. Te ramener often means 'to bring back something that belongs to you' but in that case, there is no "back".
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jul 16 at 12:35
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    @temporary_user_name Not dès alone indeed. I searched for dès followed by some past participles I thought were more likely to appear in this kind of phrases. I'm still adding examples by the way. Unlike what a comment says, this is not a case of forgotten words by mistake. These sentences do represent what the persons would have say orally, and what can even be found in some published material. There is no point denying it.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jul 16 at 20:36
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This is a familiar way of speaking that doesn't translate well when written.

"Dès fini ton plat" -> just as your dish has been finished

"(les serveurs) te débarrassent" -> (the waiters) clean up

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    It's not "a familiar way of speaking", I'm french and never have I seen this written (and it's also simply not grammatically correct), this looks like a typo of the author. It should be "Dès que t'as fini ton plat, ils te débarrassent". This is just typical of a person typing fast because they're pissed and forgetting some words
    – Tofandel
    Commented Jul 16 at 14:19
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    It's not a familiar way of speaking, there are typos and a missing comma and grammatical issues A correct version could have been "Dès ton plat fini, ils te débarrassent illico"
    – Tofandel
    Commented Jul 16 at 14:24
  • Justement vous n'avez jamais vu cela écrit car c'est une tournure purement orale marquée par les écarts à la grammaire qu'on se permet dans ce genre de registre. C'est du même niveau qu'un "je fais qu'est-ce que je veux".
    – Anne Aunyme
    Commented Jul 16 at 17:29
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    @Tofandel There are definitely a few mistakes in what was written but there is no evidence that dès fini ton plat expression is one of them. The fact a turn of phrase is very rare doesn't imply ungrammaticality, not to mention this inversion is described in Le Bon Usage and has been used at least by a couple of authors.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jul 17 at 13:47
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This is just not correct French, and the author missed a few words (among half a dozen other errors), though what is meant is clear. The important part is that it's "dès" (as soon as), not "des" (some).

Correct forms could be:

  • Dès que tu as fini ton plat ils te débarrassent
  • Dès que tu finis ton plat ils te débarrassent (similar to the previous sentence)
  • Dès ton plat fini ils te débarrassent (correct but the style does not quite match)
  • Ton plat à peine fini ils te débarrassent

...

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  • If it is incorrect, can you state what grammatical rule is broken?
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jul 16 at 21:23
  • En effet "dès fini ton plat" est ridicule au XXIe siècle et encore plus dans un commentaire. A la rigueur "dès ton plat fini", mais ça s’accorderait mal avec la suite: au prix ou tu paie bordel (...] c’est pas un cas isolé, le même constat sur 3 restaurants dans deux villes. Ceci dit, un fin observateur des pratiques locales.
    – mins
    Commented Aug 13 at 20:05

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