The Five Food-Ordering Techniques

A girl’s gotta eat.  And that means a girl’s gotta order food.  Unfortunately, I have yet to find a method that isn’t embarrassing.  Depending on the country, the cashier, and the restaurant, I use any one of my five techniques for ordering food. 

1) Try saying it in the local language. 

This is obviously the ideal choice.  About 80% of the time I even get the food I want.  It is most successful when the other person speaks English.  Usually I’ll order in French and they just repeat my order back in English.  I used to wonder how they always knew I wasn’t a native speaker but then once I accidentally introduced myself to the cashier instead of ordering.  I think that probably gave it away.

When it goes bad: Once the cashier and I tried it all in French and somehow my chocolate muffin became an M&M McFlurry... without M&Ms. 

2)  Asking what things are.

Particularly effective at la pâtisserie, asking what something is, listening to the description, then agreeing to it is another technique I often use.  In my mind I’m tricking them into thinking I speak their language as I smile and nod while they list the ingredients. 

When it goes bad:  When I don’t actually know what they’re saying, sometimes I just agree to it anyway.  Once I thought I was getting some sort of sweet cheesecake and ended up with flan.

3)  “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Since I strategically place myself behind one of my friends, I often let them struggle through ordering and take notes.  If the person working is particularly unfriendly I usually walk up to them pretending to be as French as possible and just tell them I’ll have “the same”. 

When it goes bad:  On one of our first days here I forgot how to say “the same.”  I figured I’d just use a similar word so all I said was “too.”  They laughed at me.

4)  Use any language.

Spain was really the only place we’ve had major trouble communicating because we kept going to places where they didn’t speak English.  To order, we would just use any language and hope one of the words is similar to a language they speak.

When it goes bad:  While that method is effective for many words, “cheese” is one of the words where this will not work…and we really liked the cheese sandwiches.

5)  Point, nod, smile and take whatever they bring out.

In Spain I often used this technique.  Usually the server understood it to be the universal sign for I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing-here-and-I'm-sorry-you-got-stuck-waiting-on-me-today.-I-hope-this-isn't-too-awkward-for-you and probably made fun of me to my face but what do I care?  I’m just a dumb American.

When it goes bad:  We wanted grilled chicken sandwiches once and the man tried to give us microwaved ham and cheese.  When we finally got him to understand what we wanted he came back and told us they were out of chicken but we would be having “white beef.”