Spanish for food and drink
Restaurant Spanish is covered in its own guide. This one is everything around it: the bar, the market, the words for the meals themselves, and how to say a dish was good without sounding like a phrasebook.
At the bar
Bar Spanish names the size and the thing. Una caña is a small draught beer in Spain, and algo para picar asks for something to pick at. Asking ¿qué tapas tienen? gets you the list nobody writes down.
At the market
¿A cuánto está? asks the price per kilo, for things whose price changes with the day, where ¿cuánto cuesta? is for fixed prices. ¿Me pone dos? is how Spain asks to be served: will you put me two.
The meals, and when
La comida means both food and lunch, because lunch is the main meal. The menú del día is a set lunch of two courses, bread, a drink and dessert or coffee, and it is the best value meal in the country.
Saying what you think
Estar, not ser, describes how food is right now: está buenísimo, está salado. Ser would describe what the dish always is. The same split explains a great deal of Spanish.
Three things worth knowing
¿Qué hay de comida? can mean what is there to eat, or what is for lunch, and context settles it every time. The same doubling happens with la cena and cenar. It is worth noticing once rather than being surprised by it in the moment.
Adding -ísimo to an adjective is the everyday way to say very: bueno becomes buenísimo, caro becomes carísimo, rico becomes riquísimo, with the spelling shifting to keep the sound. It is more natural than muy and it makes you sound far less like a textbook.
Ordering una cerveza in Spain gets you a question back about size. una caña is the small glass, un tercio is a 330ml bottle, and una jarra is a big one. In most of Latin America none of that applies and una cerveza is simply a beer.
A caña is a measure, not a brand, la comida means both lunch and food, and the best value meal in Spain is written on a chalkboard outside.
Spanish meal times, and why lunch is the big one →The 90 day course builds these phrases into real conversation, one short lesson a day. Days 1 to 7 need no account.
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