Learn how to place your meal order
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| Ciao a tutti! Sono Consuelo. Hi everybody! I’m Consuelo. |
| Welcome back to ItalianPod101.com’s Italiano in tre minuti, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Italian. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to get a table at a restaurant. Today, we are going to learn how to order your food and drinks. |
| Normally, to get the waiter’s attention, you can just raise your hand and simply say Scusi! excuse me, and then ask for a menu: Un menù per favore. A menu, please. |
| (One more time, slowly: scusi, un menù per favore.) |
| Please memorize these words: per favore, it means please. |
| Now you should choose your: |
| antipasto, appetizer |
| primo, first dish, usually pasta |
| secondo, second dish, which can be fish or meat |
| contorno, side dish |
| …and finally, dolce, the dessert! |
| Hey, don’t worry, you don’t have to eat all of these if you don’t want to! |
| Usually the waiter will begin by asking: posso portarvi da bere? Can I bring you drinks? |
| (One more time, slowly: posso portarvi da bere?) |
| …And leave you time to choose your dishes. |
| When he or she comes back with your drinks, you will be asked: Cosa desidera ordinare? What would you like to order? |
| (One more time, slowly: cosa desidera ordinare?) |
| Cosa is the Italian for ‘what’ and it’s followed by desidera, the third singular person of the verb desiderare which in English literally means ‘to wish.’ Please note that it is used in a formal level of speech. Then you have ordinare ‘to order’. |
| Okay, now here you have basically two options: you can say vorrei or per me followed by the name of the food. Vorrei means ‘I would like’ and per me means ‘for me’. If you go for two things, you should use the conjugation e, meaning "and." Let’s now see some practical examples. |
| Here background changes and I am sitting with someone at the table, voice over of the waiter out of the camera: |
| Consuelo: Scusi! Un menù per favore! |
| Waiter: Sì, subito! |
| [...] |
| Waiter: Posso portarvi da bere? |
| Consuelo: Sì, acqua naturale e vino rosso per favore. |
| [...] |
| Waiter: Cosa desidera ordinare? |
| Consuelo: Vorrei spaghetti alla carbonara. |
| Guy: Per me bistecca fiorentina e insalata, grazie. |
| Did you see? That’s super easy!! |
| Now it’s time for Consuelo’s tips. |
| In many tourist cities, restaurants have English menus. If you need one, just ask un menu in inglese, per favore! If, unfortunately, the restaurant doesn't have one, first try to read the menu in Italian and if you don’t know what a dish is, try to ask cosa c’è in…? What’s inside…? |
| Ah, and if you are with Italians, please don’t forget to say buon appetito, enjoy your meal, before eating. Everybody in Italy uses this expression every time we eat meals! |
| In this lesson, we learned how to order food and drinks. Next time we’ll learn the phrase il conto per favore. Do you know what that means? Next time you’re going to learn this and other phrases we use when leaving a restaurant. |
| We’ll be waiting for you in our next Italiano in tre minuti lesson. |
| Ciao, alla prossima lezione!! |
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