Food & Drinks in Spanish (pt. 1) – Lesson 29

Food and drinks in Spanish: part 1

Food and drinks is a huge topic, so I split it into 4 parts. In this first part we start with the drinks: the basics like water, coffee, juice, beer and wine, and how to order one.

After the long restaurant lessons, these lessons are shorter on purpose: about 15 words each, so you can really focus on them.

The food, the drink

See the connection? La comida comes from comer (to eat), and la bebida comes from beber (to drink). Learn one, and you get the other almost for free.

Water, tea and coffee

El agua is a tricky one. It ends in -a and it’s actually a feminine word, but it uses el instead of la. Why? Because la agua is hard to say: two a sounds crash into each other. Words that start with a stressed a do this. You can see it’s feminine when you add a word: el agua fría (the cold water), las aguas.

And té has a tilde so you don’t mix it up with te (you): remember lesson 27?

Juice: zumo or jugo?

Both mean juice. In Spain people say zumo, and in Latin America it’s jugo. And just like carne de cerdo in the restaurant lesson, Spanish says “juice of orange”: zumo de naranja.

Milk

Not into cow’s milk? Leche de avena is literally “milk of oats”. Same pattern again!

Soft drinks: refresco or gaseosa?

Again, it depends on where you are. Refresco is what you’ll hear in Spain and Mexico. Gaseosa is common in many South American countries, like Argentina, Colombia and Peru.

Wine and beer

Careful: red wine is vino tinto, not vino rojo. Rojo is the normal word for red, but for wine, Spanish uses tinto. And cerveza… you probably knew that one already.

Ordering a drink

The waiter comes to your table and asks:

Literally “what want you to drink?” That’s querer + beber: two verbs together, just like with poder. You answer with quiero + your drink:

Order a beer, and the waiter might ask if you want a big or a small one:

Grande stays the same for masculine and feminine. Pequeño changes: una cerveza is feminine, so it’s pequeña. For a coffee (el café) it would be ¿grande o pequeño?

¿Me pones…?

We saw this one in the restaurant lesson. Literally it means “do you put me…?”, but it’s how people order in Spain, especially at a bar or café:

Recap: drinks in Spanish

Spanish	English
la comida / comer	the food / to eat
la bebida / beber	the drink / to drink
el agua	the water
el té	the tea
el café	the coffee
■■■■■■■■	■■■■■■■■
■■■■■■■■	■■■■■■■■
■■■■■■■■	■■■■■■■■

+ 7 more words & phrases

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Practice: drinks

Say it out loud first, then click to check.

1. How do you say “the water”?

El agua. (A feminine word that uses el.)

2. Order an orange juice in Spain.

Quiero un zumo de naranja, por favor.

3. Order an apple juice in Mexico.

Quiero un jugo de manzana, por favor.

4. How do you say “the red wine”?

El vino tinto.

5. The waiter asks “¿Qué quieres beber?”. Ask for a beer.

Quiero una cerveza, por favor.

6. Order a coffee at a bar in Spain, informally.

¿Me pones un café, por favor?

Quiz: drinks in Spanish

10 questions. ¿Qué quieres beber?

Frequently asked questions

How do you order a small beer in Spain?

Besides una cerveza pequeña, you’ll often hear una caña: a small draft beer. Ask for una caña, por favor at any bar in Spain and you’re good.

Is it “agua fría” or “agua frío”?

Agua fría. Even though it’s el agua, the word is feminine, so words that describe it are feminine too.

Before you go to the next lesson

That’s part 1 of food and drinks: your drinks are sorted! Grab the free reference sheet below, and in the next part we’ll continue with the food. ¡Salud!