Knowing how to order food and drinks in Italian is essential to all travelers or beginners of Italian.
Here is a useful list in bullet points of the phrases you can use:
1) Per me… – for me…
2) Prendo… – I’ll take
3) Vorrei… – I’d like
Let’s see how they work:
1) Per me un espresso / un cappuccino / un cornetto / una spremuta. This one is the most common phrase used to order food or drinks.
2) Per primo (as a main dish) prendo gli spaghetti con le vongole.
3) Vorrei una margherita e una coca cola.
As for tipping, it can be confusing in Italy as it is not the standard practice: it is considered a “plus”, an extra, so your waiter will be very pleased if you do.
Coffee is normally taken at the counter, as a consequence there is no much space for service. Still since coffee is so cheap in most parts of Italy – 0,80p – , you normally pay with 1 euro and leave the other 0,20p at the counter.
If you sit at the table of a bar or restaurant, it is up to you: most include service in the bill (“servizio incluso”) but if the don’t, you are not required to leave tips if you feel the service was not exciting.
Ora siete pronti/e per ordinare da bere al bar come me! 🙂
You might need to be familiar these two verbs: volere (to want) and preferire (to prefer)!
These are irregular. Well, to be precise only “volere” is 100% irregular, whereas “preferire” just need us to add a small syllable here and there, -isc, but its root does never change, unlike “volere”, which makes “preferire” a regular verb with a small irregularity.
Let’s see their conjugation before using them in an exercise:
For practice and exercises, check the related page by clicking the link.
