To encourage diners to dig into a delicious meal, an Italian might say mangia!, a French person bon appetit! and Spaniard would say buen provecho. But English doesn’t seem to have its own phrase that does the job in quite the same way. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Eat Well and Enjoy?”
I have a question for you, Grant. Somebody said to me the other day, what do we say in English that’s the equivalent of bon appetit?
You say manja in Italian, you say buen provecho in Spanish.
I know, right? I mean, at our house, when I was growing up, we said dig in.
Or in restaurants. Enjoy.
Oh, enjoy. Yeah.
Yeah, too much aversion to that one, right?
I know. That one just makes my skin crawl. Enjoy.
It’s formulaic. They say it because they’re supposed to say it, not because they mean it.
Yeah, but what is the English version of bon appetit?
I don’t think we have one. Most people say bon appetit anyway.
Yeah. And so why is that? Why don’t we have that?
I don’t know. Because food is fodder and food is not meant to be fun? I don’t know.
What do you say if you want somebody to enjoy a meal that you’ve set out before them and you don’t want to use another language?
Let us know. 877-929-9673.
