Customer Reviews

Eating & Drinking in Italy: Italian Menu Translator and Restaurant Guide, Fourth Edition (Open Road Travel Guides)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Not only does this book have the most comprehensive menu translator available (and it really can save you from making some huge mistakes when ordering), but the restaurant recommendations are perfect if you're looking for excellent Italian dining. There are great recommendations for restaurants in Rome, Venice, Florence and Milan that we used on our last trip. We dined at moderate prices on great meals thanks to this pocket sized book. Highly recommended!

This is a must have guide for anyone who wants to really understand what they are eating or shopping for at the open air markets in Italy. While I speak "un po" Italiano, I don't have a command for the language at all and I really am interested in the foods and wines. So, when I purchased this book, I had a world that was opened up to me during my food experiences in Italy. It made ordering so much easier and more pleasurable. And I could share it with other English speaking people around me. I highly recommend this book for anyone going to Italy. And, if I travel to other cities where these two gentelman have written a guide book for, I will be sure to secure one before beginning my journey.

This book is awesome, we live in Italy most of the year and dining out has proven to be difficult at times. This book is small enough to carry with you and easy to understand and very informative. A real must for anyone traveling or dining out in Italy.

We just got back from a 1 week trip in Italy to Pisa, Cararra, Parma and Monte San Sevino. This book was perfect for translating menus during our trip. 99% of what we were looking for was in the book! It was slim and lightweight and was not a burden to carry with me everyday. We did not visit any of the cities of the restaurants listed in the book so I can't comment on the restaurant recommendations. We used it in addition to the Rick Steves' Italian section of his French, Italian and German phrase book. I left it with the owner of a restaurant in Monte San Sevino. I'll be ordering another one soon and looking for Herbach's guide to Eating in France for our next trip.

We are living in Italy for a couple of years so we needed something that could help us survive when we go out to eat. This book is fantastic. We are slow using it because you have to look up every word in the decription of the meal, but the vast majority of the words are there!! We have friends that are fluent in Italian and they were quite impressed with this book. I highly recommend it.

So this is the most essential book we had on our honeymoon. If you are going to Italy buy this. It is small enough to fit in a purse (not a most clutches or small purses though) or a bag or even the back pockets of most jeans (for a guy that is). While it is small it is not hard to read or too thick....basically this is designed by people who travel for people who are traveling with close attention to detail on understanding the needs of people who are not carrying books the size of dictionaries as they explore a country.

My wife and I know functional Spanish which was moderately helpful in moving around Italy. But Italy is a tourist destination so a lot of vendors speak at least some English. A lot of menus had English translations, but many of the descriptive words were not translated so it was guess work at some point in major cities. This little book cleared this guess work up and helped us fully understand what we were ordering.

We also spent some time in the countryside where there was a lot less English. That is when this book became a lifesaver. We are foodies and this really helped us understand entire menus that were only in Italian. All you should need is this book and a general guidebook (e.g. Italy for Dummies) to take in the full experience of Italy

For anyone with food allergies this will be the most important purchase of your trip. It will literally save your life.

They also make other books, and I plan on using them for traveling as we explore the globe.

Picked this up for a trip but am already using it at home... I live in San Francisco where there are lots of restaurants that write their menus in Italian. And no matter how nice the servers are, I always feel like a rube when I have to ask what something is or how to say it. Thanks to this guide, I can scope out a menu beforehand and figure out what things are and even how to pronounce them. And it's a fun read to boot.

Maybe this book should be categorized under "self-help," because it sure makes me feel more confident!

Great value for the price, too...

I just wanted to say thank you to the author of this book. I have been to Italy many times but still always had a difficult time ordering. Usually the places I go in Italy do not have English translations for their menus. I traveled for about a month last year throughout Italy and went to many different little towns and no matter what they had on the menu -- it was in this book! You guys are awesome!

This compact book is essential if you want to know what to order and where to eat in Italy. Sure, you can go into the tourist restaurants and read the menus printed in English, but who wants to go to those types of places?

What do you do when you go into an authentic Italian joint, where the menu is not in English? That's where "Eating and Drinking in Italy" comes in. Andy Herbach's menu reader will translate everything that's in Italian into English so that you don't need to use the risky "point and pray" method of ordering a meal. I find this (and his other books) indispensable when I travel abroad.

Bravo Andy!

Steve from [...]

The purchasing/shipping company I dealt with did a great job. I received exactly what I ordered & am pleased with it.