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Saturday, June 4, 2016

Spanish Menu Translation - inspired by Toresano restaurant in Ruislip



Interrupting my daily Spanish lessons was the thud of the free magazine. I opened Optima magazine and read a review of Toresano, a restaurant in Ruislip, new to me.

I went onto the restaurant's website, found out the name comes from the town of Torre and a Toresana is a person from there, and I started checking the men's Spanish words.

Here's a handy list in alphabetical order:

Spanish - English
a j i l l o (not jail which was the choice of spell checker)  - garlic
Catalana - from the Catalan region or Catalan style
cochinillo - suckling pig (diminutive - think cochon pig)
con - with
crema - cream
crema Catalana
croquetas - croquettes (cut up or shredded or mashed bits in batter)
de - of
filete - filet or slice off the bone of fish or meat
gambas - prawns
garbanzos - chickpeas?
marinado - marinated
mero - halibut?
mixta - mixed
o - or
spinacas - spinach
vegetales - vegetables

Tapas
A small plate of food, often an aperitif served with drinks, eg olives and other titbits, sometimes served free in bars, increasingly served in UK restaurants as a small sharing plate as starters or for a multi dish main course. The word comes from the slice of meat placed across a drink in the old days to keep off the flies. However, the Toresano restaurant menu tells a different story about King Alfonso who was sick and had teeny plates of food with wine and when he recovered passed a law.

A place to practice your Spanish - a Spanish restaurant. However, we did go to a French restaurant in New York with our French former au pair girl Caroline. When she tried speaking fluent French to the waiters it became apparent that they were not native French speakers.

At the moment, a Spanish menu and perhaps a Spanish song, or Mexican song, would do just nicely for me.

The Spanish menu, especially if bilingual, with handy expansions of ingredients plus explanations in English is useful for English people learning Spanish, also for Spanish people learning English.

If you want to practise your Spanish,:
1 Watch Spanish speaking films on the internet with English subtitles,
2 Read the daily news from a Spanish newspaper online,
3 To to a spanish speaking conversation club,
4 Attend a Spanish speaking club in Toastmasters International public speaking organisation.
5 Learn or revise your Spanish using duo lingo.com , free online course
6 Read my previous posts on Spanish
7 https://translate.google.com
8 Website translations: Many websites have a little flag in the top right hand corner. You can click on that to get the web page translated into other languages such as Spanish from English, or English from Spanish.
9 You can also install the language flag in your own computer or laptop. This helps if you want to type Spanish words with the correct accents.

More Information From

Toresano Restaurant
36 High Street, Ruislip, HA4 7AN, tel: 01895 633128
Review in
www.optimamagazine.co.uk
Reviews on TripAdvisor:
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g1869831-d3216773-Reviews-Toresano-Ruislip_Greater_London_England.html

toastmasters international find a club

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, language teacher, language translator.


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