Key Points
Ina Garten revealed she blurted out an NSFW phrase in French while trying to compliment a hairdresser in France.
Garten said the stylist was “horrified” by her words.
The chef said she knew she said “something wrong, but I have no idea what.”
While Ina Garten may be adept at making French cuisine, she’s less skilled in the language.
The Barefoot Contessa alum revealed that a joke got lost in translation while she was at a hair appointment in France. In an effort to compliment her stylist, Garten accidentally offended him with a lewd statement.
“I went to a hairdresser once in France and he said in French, ‘Would you like your hair straight or curly?'” she recalled during Wednesday’s episode of her podcast, Happy Hour with Ina Garten. “I thought, ‘Oh, what the hell, it’s New Year’s Eve, how about curly?’ So he did my hair curly and I wanted to say to him, and I did it in French, I wanted to say, ‘When my husband sees me, he’s gonna say, “Kiss me quick before my wife gets here.'”
However, she noted that, in French, you might “get it a little wrong” and turn out to be “just totally wrong.”
“So I just said what I thought I said, ‘Baise-moi vite en avant que ma femme n’arrive,'” she explained. “And the hairdresser was just horrified. And that night, I was like, I said something wrong, but I have no idea what. That night, I went out with friends and asked, ‘What did I say?’ And they said, he said, ‘F— me quick before my wife gets here.'”
Garten has been married to her husband Jeffrey E. Garten since 1968. While the two had this funny mix-up in France, things weren’t always smooth-sailing in their relationship.
Ina Garten attends ‘Jennifer Wallace In Conversation With Ina Garten’ at 92NY on Jan. 27, 2026 in New York City
Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty
In fact, the 78-year-old chef revealed in her 2024 memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, that the two nearly separated in the 1970s after Garten left her job as a nuclear budget analyst at the White House. She had decided to go all-in on Barefoot Contessa, which, at the time, was a small specialty food shop in the Hamptons.
“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles — took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces,” Garten wrote. “While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife. My responsibilities made it impossible for me to even think about anything else.”
The Food Network star added that her husband became a “distraction” and that she “didn’t pay enough attention to him.”
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“I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce,” Garten recalls. “I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock — or hurt — him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation.”
Ultimately, the two attended therapy and reconciled, sticking together in the years since.
Check out the full episode of Happy Hour With Ina Garten above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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