Mastering Restaurant German: A Guide to Ordering Food & Drinks Like a Local

To order food and drinks in a German restaurant, it is useful to know some key phrases, vocabulary, and etiquette. Here is a concise guide with typical expressions for ordering:

Common German Phrases for Ordering

• To get the waiter’s attention politely:
  Entschuldigung (Excuse me) or Kellner/Kellnerin (Waiter/Waitress)
• To ask for the menu:
  Die Speisekarte, bitte (The menu, please)
• To order food:
  Ich möchte … bestellen (I would like to order …)
  or Ich hätte gerne … (I would like to have …)
• To order drinks:
  Ich nehme … (I’ll have …)
  or Ein … bitte (A … please)
• To ask about a dish or drink:
  Was empfehlen Sie? (What do you recommend?)
  or Ist … im Gericht enthalten? (Is … included in the dish?)
• To ask for the bill:
  Die Rechnung, bitte (The bill, please)

Common Food and Drink Words

• Food: Essen
• Drink: Getränk
• Water: Wasser
• Beer: Bier
• Coffee: Kaffee
• Tea: Tee
• Salad: Salat
• Soup: Suppe
• Meat: Fleisch
• Vegetarian: vegetarisch

Ordering Etiquette

• Greet the staff when seated with a simple “Hallo” or Guten Tag.
• It is polite to say Bitte (please) when ordering.
• Wait until the waiter comes to your table; avoid calling loudly.
• Customers usually say Danke (thank you) when served.

These phrases and tips will help place orders confidently in a German restaurant for both food and drinks. If a specific context or typical menu phrases are needed, I can provide more detailed examples. Would that be helpful?

References

• Development of Mobile Application for Pre Order Food and Beverage

• Ordering tasting in a restaurant: experiencing, socializing, and processing food

• The Influence of Globalization Processes on the Development of the Restaurant Business of Ukraine

• Quality of Service Analysis on EaTrain Application at A Restaurant on A Train

• Analysis of Food and Beverage Sales and Consumer Profile of Railway Restaurants

• Analysis of the Role of Waiters and Waitresses in Improving Service Quality at Kasasa Restaurant at Paradise Hotel Golf & Resort

• The Restaurant Meal Delivery Problem with Ghost Kitchens

• Badra lebanese fast food and drinks : diseño, planificación y aplicación de una estrategia de mercadeo

• Efficiency of Digital Innovation Using QR on the Culinary Menu at Kulkul Beach House Restaurant Nusa Dua

• Food Ordering Application in Restaurant using Loyalty Program Based on Android

• Smart QR-based Restaurant Dine-in System with Sales Analysis

• MaiBaam Annotation Guidelines

• Overcoming The Buildup of Queues By Carrying Out the Concept of Self-Service Using Responsive Web-Based Applications

• Automatic Restaurant Food Ordering Menu Card

• GERestaurant: A German Dataset of Annotated Restaurant Reviews for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis

• Information System Ordering Online Restaurant Menu At Hover Cafe

• Automated System for Restaurant Services

• Eating and drinking seen through translation: A study of food-related translation difficulties and techniques in a parallel corpus of literary texts