Speaking Spanish
How to tell a restaurant about a food allergy, in Spanish
If you are in the chair right now
Soy alérgico al marisco. ¿Me lo puede confirmar con la cocina?
I'm allergic to shellfish. Could you check with the kitchen for me?
If that gets brushed off
Es una alergia grave. No puedo comer nada que lleve marisco.
It's a serious allergy. I can't eat anything with shellfish in it.
Say alérgico, not intolerante — an intolerancia gets treated as a preference in most kitchens, and an alergia does not. If you are a woman, alérgica. Ask them to check rather than asking whether it contains nuts: a waiter will happily guess at the second question and cannot guess at the first.
Every phrasebook has the word for allergy. None of them prepare you for the part that actually matters: a waiter who nods, means well, and does not go and ask. Getting it taken seriously is a different skill from knowing the noun, and it is the one worth practising.
If you need more than one line
softest
¿Me puede decir si este plato lleva marisco?
Can you tell me whether this dish has shellfish in it? Lleva is the verb for what a dish contains — tiene sounds like you are asking what it owns.
neutral
Soy alérgico al marisco.
I'm allergic to shellfish. Swap in: los frutos secos (nuts), los cacahuetes (peanuts), el gluten, la lactosa, los huevos.
neutral
¿Podría preguntar en la cocina, por favor?
Could you ask in the kitchen, please? The question that actually protects you.
firmest
Si lleva, prefiero pedir otra cosa.
If it does, I'd rather order something else. Gives them an easy way to say yes.
Two things worth knowing
The word for allergy is the easy part.
Alergia and intolerancia are not treated the same
Both translate cleanly, but they land very differently in a kitchen. Intolerancia is widely heard as a preference to accommodate if convenient; alergia is heard as a medical constraint. If yours is an allergy, say alergia and say grave if it is serious. Being precise here matters more than being polite.
Ask them to check, not whether it contains it
«¿Lleva frutos secos?» invites an answer from memory, and a busy waiter will give you one. «¿Me lo puede confirmar con la cocina?» asks for a different thing entirely, and it is much harder to answer casually. The grammar is not the difficult part — knowing which question to ask is.
What Isabel actually said
What you have to get done
- Say what food I can't eat
- Ask what's in a dish
- Ask them to check with the kitchen
Isabel
Good evening, how are you?
You
Good evening, I'm well, but I have a shellfish allergy. Could you ask the kitchen what ingredients the dishes on the menu have?
Isabel
Of course, no problem. I'll go and ask the kitchen about the ingredients. One moment, please.
You
Thank you, Isabel. I really appreciate your help. If you could tell me which dishes contain shellfish, that would be great.
Isabel
Of course, I'll let you know about the dishes with shellfish. Thank you for your patience. Have a good evening.
The whole conversation, unedited
A real run in the app, nothing scripted on the waiter's side. The transcript above is taken from this recording, and the objectives tick off on screen as they are met.
Turn sound on to hear it.
Now say it yourself
Reading that is not the same as producing it with someone waiting, which is the entire difficulty. You can have this exact conversation in the app: Isabel is a third of the way through, and you have three things to get done.
It is free, it takes about a minute to start, and the first attempt is allowed to be terrible.
Practise this conversation
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