Restaurant reservations: Number of guests

💬 In questions like [puis-je], French often flips the verb and subject pronoun: compare [je peux] but [puis-je ?]. This [puis-] form is mostly used in polite, formal questions.

💬 [Puis-je] is a formal way to say [can I?]; in everyday speech you will more often hear [est-ce que je peux... ?]. Both work, but this version is especially common in customer-service French.

🇫🇷 This sounds polite and professional, the kind of thing staff say to customers. You would understand it fine, but most learners would not need to speak this formally in a simple reservation call.

💬 [Je voudrais] is the polite way to ask for something: literally more like [I would like] than [I want]. You can reuse it with many nouns and verbs, like [Je voudrais une table] or [Je voudrais réserver].