The favorite place where you can practice your basic knowledge of the Portuguese language is a cafe and restaurant. If you haven’t had the chance to dive into grammar yet, having a simple dialogue in a café won’t hurt you. It’s enough to know some vocabulary and remember just a couple of grammatical rules.
Now we will prove this to you. What a lunch or dinner consists of
Any substantial meal in Portugal follows the same pattern. To avoid misunderstandings, let’s get acquainted with it. First of all, lunch or dinner begins with entradas (snacks).
They can be left on the table right away or you may be asked if you want them. Usually, this is bread and olives. In old restaurants, the consumption of snacks does not affect the bill, as their cost is already included in the price of the main dish, but in modern restaurants, snacks can cost as much as half of the main dish, and this news can spoil the mood at the end.
After the snacks, it is customary to have soup, but it is not shameful to skip this dish. The most popular soups in Portugal are as follows: caldo verde – cabbage soup, sopa da pedra – bean soup with various types of meat, canja de galinha – chicken soup, sopa de peixe – fish soup. These four soups differ significantly from each other, while all other soups are similar. They have a pureed consistency with the addition of greens and most often without the addition of meat.
If you are not very hungry, you can go straight to the second course. As you can understand, you first need to decide – peixe (fish) or carne (meat). Portugal is not a vegetarian country. Moreover, here it is customary to eat absolutely all parts of the animal’s body – starting with tripas (intestines) and ending with orelhas (ears) and bochehas (cheeks). The list of dishes is huge, so we will not list them all, especially since we have written about them before.
Locals prefer to order white wine for seafood dishes and red wine for meat dishes. At the same time, they take a bottle of still water. Foreigners, on the other hand, order orange juice. And after a hearty meal, it is essential to drink coffee. If you order “um café”, you will be served espresso. In most restaurants, you can ask to add something alcoholic to the coffee – aguardente. You can also order sobremesa (dessert), but it is not mandatory.
Dialogue
Learn how you can gain the basic knowledge to have a meaningful conversation with your waiter.
- Empregado: Boa tarde! Bem-vindo ao nosso restaurante. Tem reserva? (Good afternoon! Welcome to our restaurant. Do you have a reservation?)
- Cliente: Boa tarde! Não, não tenho. (Good afternoon! No, I don’t.)
- Empregado: Sem problema! Aqui está a sua mesa. Aqui está a ementa. (No problem! Here’s your table. Here’s the menu.)
- Cliente: Obrigado. Queria uma sopa de legumes e meia dose de bacalhau com natas. (No problem! Here’s your table. Here’s the menu.)
- Empregado: Certo. E para beber? (Sure. And to drink?)
- Cliente: Queria um copo de vinho branco. (I would like a glass of white wine.)
- Empregado: Vai desejar entradas? (Will you want starters?)
- Cliente: Só pão. (Just bread.)
- Empregado: Aqui está o pão, a sopa e o vinho. Vou trazer o bacalhau daqui a 5 minutos. (Here’s the bread, soup and wine. I’ll bring the cod in 5 minutes.)
- Cliente: Obrigado. (Thanks.)
- Empregado: Aqui está o bacalhau. É preciso mais alguma coisa. (Here’s the cod. Something else is needed.)
- Cliente: Por agora não, obrigado. (Not for now, thanks.)
(…)
- Empregado: Já terminou? (Already finished?)
- Cliente: Sim. Estava tudo muito bom. Agora só queria um café, por favor. (Yes. Everything was very good. Now I just want a coffee, please.)
- Empregado: Não quer experimentar uma sobremesa. (Don’t want to try a dessert.)
- Cliente: Quero, mas não posso, porque tenho problemas com o açúcar. (I want to, but I can’t because I have problems with sugar.)
- Empregado: Que pena! (What a shame!)
(…)
- Cliente: É a conta, por favor. (This is the bill, please.)
- Garçom: Aqui está. (Here it is.)
- Cliente: Obrigado! Até à próxima. (Thank you! See you next time.)
The verb “to be able to”
In Portuguese, there are two verbs that convey this meaning. However, they are used in different situations and still have some differences. In the dialogue, we encounter the verb poder (to be able to), which is used in cases when we talk about physical possibilities. Whether it is the presence or absence of time, a doctor’s prescription, or personal beliefs.
- Não posso beber vinho porque tenho uma reunião muito importante amanhã. (I can’t drink wine because I have a very important meeting tomorrow.)
- Ele não pode comer carne. Ele é vegetariano. (He can’t eat meat. He is a vegetarian.)
The second verb, which is translated in the same way but is used in the sense of “to manage, to succeed” – conseguir (to be able to). In this case, a person can, but they succeed for a number of reasons and possibly only this time.
- Não consigo abrir esta garrafa de vinho. (I can’t open this bottle of wine.)
- Não conseguimos comer tudo. O prato é enorme! (We can’t eat everything. The dish is enormous!)
Farewell
A common mistake that foreigners make is to end a meeting by saying “até logo” (see you soon). However, in Portuguese, this expression is used when you plan to meet again today. Instead, it would be better to say “até à próxima” (until next time) or the similarly translated “até breve” (see you soon).
Conclusion
We have written about cafes and restaurants in the past and will write more than once in the future, because this is a great situation to practice your Portuguese. The waiter will not pester you with long questions, and you will find out whether the locals understand you. Moreover, this way you will be able to impress your friends with your knowledge!