I have been sent details of a forthcoming Tapas Restaurant meeting in London, England. London has several Tapas Restaurants. I looked up the menu on the restaurant website. I translated the words. I looked at the restaurant website and saw three desserts, all containing ice cream, but still did not know which was which. So I went to TripAdvisor where I found customer photos at the top and the most useful pictures, which I have a click for useful, showed the food and had a caption saying which ingredients were shown.
Having sorted out the desserts, I could see what was all sugar or all sugar and fat (I love it - but my companions will be telling me I need to lose weight and I will be wondering about my next dental appointment. Any dessert with chocolate? Scrumptious.
Any dessert with healthy fruit? Figs? Dates? Should I go for the cheese and figs? That has fruit and calcium.
If the restaurant has two sittings, or closes early, at 2 pm lunch time, or 6 or 7, o 9 or 10 in the evening, or I am running for a train to another event or to get home, I need to allow time for coffee and cleaning all that sugar off my teeth.
I then looked at the savouries and checked on all the foods to which I am allergic (prawns, oysters, lobster, mixed shellfish). I checked on what I might wish to avoid (suckling pig, pig's cheek, pig's trotters). Other members of my group will be very keen on these dishes. But it could be a problem if they want to share the food, or share the bill as we need two sets of orders, one for them and one for me. I also looked at salami (highly processed food - avoid if your family has been on a post-cancer and prevent returning cancer diet).
Finally I am making a translation of a Spanish menu. TripAdvisor did not help. Google found me Wikipedia and dictionaries and reviews but I wasted a lot of time on long posts like this one which made me hunt to the end for a translation. (I had to use menus from some nearby rival restaurants and those in other countries to finally get what I wanted). I remembered buying a laminated card which translates menus at a museum in Spain, either at a Rioja vineyard tour shop, or at the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao in Northern Spain. However, I now don't know where it is. Probably inside the front cover of a large English-Spanish Dictionary.
So now my next task is to create an ongoing menu translation for myself which I will share with you.
Please follow my posts. Some of the Spanish terms are so similar to the Italian and Portuguese that if you know one you can guess the word from the other, or they have dishes in common or borrowed from each other, just as English menus often contain French dishes.
Tapas - small portion or snack, originally the plate made from a piece of thick salami placed over an alcoholic drink at a bar to keep flies off. Later an accompaniment to drinks. Same as we serve olives or nuts with drinks in England. In some bars tapas would be free, to keep you drinking. Salted nuts make you thirsty so you feel the need to drink more. Dehydration makes you want to drink.
To avoid getting drunk or dehydrating, either ask for water, or take your own. If you take your own you could drink it before entering the restaurant or after leaving. (Or in the toilet cubicle if you are using it to clean your teeth.)
SPANISH / ITALIAN MENU TRANSLATED
affogato - coffee ice cream, sometimes vanilla ice cream with espresso coffee poured over it. Delicious.
porcini - mushroom
Spanish restaurants with menus online
www.dehesa.co.uk Spanish-Italian menu
"Dehesa- a unique woodland area in Spain which is home to the black-footed Ibérico pigs – said to produce the best ham in the world."
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186338-d1027064-Reviews-Dehesa-London_England.html
http://translation.babylon.com/english/Porcini/
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/affogato
Angela Lansbury BA Hons, ACG, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker. (Books on Amazon and Lulu. Follow me on blogger and follow me and like my pages on Facebook. If you are Travel, PR, or any related business please invite me to events or contact me on LinkedIn.
I have put this up for you to read
and will add more here and to a later post.
Having sorted out the desserts, I could see what was all sugar or all sugar and fat (I love it - but my companions will be telling me I need to lose weight and I will be wondering about my next dental appointment. Any dessert with chocolate? Scrumptious.
Any dessert with healthy fruit? Figs? Dates? Should I go for the cheese and figs? That has fruit and calcium.
If the restaurant has two sittings, or closes early, at 2 pm lunch time, or 6 or 7, o 9 or 10 in the evening, or I am running for a train to another event or to get home, I need to allow time for coffee and cleaning all that sugar off my teeth.
I then looked at the savouries and checked on all the foods to which I am allergic (prawns, oysters, lobster, mixed shellfish). I checked on what I might wish to avoid (suckling pig, pig's cheek, pig's trotters). Other members of my group will be very keen on these dishes. But it could be a problem if they want to share the food, or share the bill as we need two sets of orders, one for them and one for me. I also looked at salami (highly processed food - avoid if your family has been on a post-cancer and prevent returning cancer diet).
Finally I am making a translation of a Spanish menu. TripAdvisor did not help. Google found me Wikipedia and dictionaries and reviews but I wasted a lot of time on long posts like this one which made me hunt to the end for a translation. (I had to use menus from some nearby rival restaurants and those in other countries to finally get what I wanted). I remembered buying a laminated card which translates menus at a museum in Spain, either at a Rioja vineyard tour shop, or at the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao in Northern Spain. However, I now don't know where it is. Probably inside the front cover of a large English-Spanish Dictionary.
So now my next task is to create an ongoing menu translation for myself which I will share with you.
Please follow my posts. Some of the Spanish terms are so similar to the Italian and Portuguese that if you know one you can guess the word from the other, or they have dishes in common or borrowed from each other, just as English menus often contain French dishes.
Tapas - small portion or snack, originally the plate made from a piece of thick salami placed over an alcoholic drink at a bar to keep flies off. Later an accompaniment to drinks. Same as we serve olives or nuts with drinks in England. In some bars tapas would be free, to keep you drinking. Salted nuts make you thirsty so you feel the need to drink more. Dehydration makes you want to drink.
To avoid getting drunk or dehydrating, either ask for water, or take your own. If you take your own you could drink it before entering the restaurant or after leaving. (Or in the toilet cubicle if you are using it to clean your teeth.)
affogato - coffee ice cream, sometimes vanilla ice cream with espresso coffee poured over it. Delicious.
porcini - mushroom
Spanish restaurants with menus online
www.dehesa.co.uk Spanish-Italian menu
"Dehesa- a unique woodland area in Spain which is home to the black-footed Ibérico pigs – said to produce the best ham in the world."
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186338-d1027064-Reviews-Dehesa-London_England.html
http://translation.babylon.com/english/Porcini/
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/affogato
Angela Lansbury BA Hons, ACG, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker. (Books on Amazon and Lulu. Follow me on blogger and follow me and like my pages on Facebook. If you are Travel, PR, or any related business please invite me to events or contact me on LinkedIn.
I have put this up for you to read
and will add more here and to a later post.
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