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Yet another Twitter/Instagram Pal, Paul @pauljwhite is from Newcastle but he spends a lot of time travelling, especially to Spain. We first met in person earlier this year when he was in Sevilla and he’s been back a couple of times since. And guess what? He loves doing Tapas Research!
He was also very helpful this time because one of our dishes arrived way overcooked. As I had already *ahem* mentioned a couple of other things to the waiter I asked Paul if he could send back the offending tapa. Well, Paul speaks next to no Spanish, and the waiter spoke no English, so I called the waiter over and just pointed to Paul, who picked up a piece of the dried out solomillo with such a perfect scowly face and kind of shook the dead meat around… that plate was removed SO FAST and was quickly replaced with a perfectly cooked version. Ha.
Looking forward to Paul’s next visit in January, and to meeting his daughter Molly. 🙂
This reminds me of a multilingual client of mine who walked into a butcher’s in Bucharest intending to buy a cut of meat to prepare a thank you dinner for her host family, only to realize as she got to the head of the queue that she actually did not know the local word for Beef. So she pointed to what she was pretty sure was the cut she wanted and said in an interrogatory tone, “Mooooo??”
The butcher nodded and very gravely replied “Mooooo.”
So she asked for the quantity desired, which she did know how to express, and as she left the shop all the other customers applauded.
I’m glad you guys managed fluent communication across language barriers.
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