Superheroes de la gastronomia: Spanish Is Better

By JULIETTE ROSSANT I was in a car with Wilo Benet, and he was telling me about English and Spanish. Spaniards (you know, people from Spain) come into his restaurant Pikayo and demand that his menu be written in Spanish. Well, he tells them, they certainly have a point, especially since "Spanglish" can be confusing to both English- and Spanish-speakers -- but Spain hasn't run the show in Puerto Rico for 100 years or so (with all due respect)! Wilo turns back to the present and says, you know why I really like my menu in English? Because that's what makes the food sound better to me. "Roasted chicken" sounds dreamy to me, but somehow pollo asado sounds blander and less romantic [or something to that effect]. But, I counter, that's at least partly because you trained in the States. My mother, who is French, had somewhat the same problem, with much linguistic re-learning when she started translating cookbooks by Paul Bocuse into English. When she earlier had started to write her own cookbooks in English, it was after she came to live in America. You learned Haute Cuisine among anglos, so of course what you heard in kitchens like Le Bernardin is going to sound better to you. It's the same for me with Turkish food, which I learned in Istanbul: "stuffed vine leaves" just don't have the ring for me that zeytinyagli yaprak dolma. Well, now I've got my own linguistic hang-up, because today's El Nuevo Dia published an interview with me entitled "Superheroes de la gastronomia." Now I've gone and fallen in love with their Spanish term for super chefs: who would not love to be called a superhero de la gastronomia? Hmmm... sounds like a better book title than Super Chef II: Ole! (Click here to read the full article in Spanish.) Previous articles: Wilo Benet: Pikayo Perfecto Roberto Trevino: Viva Aguaviva Rossant on Rocco: New York Daily News Adam Sandler's Secret Spice: Thomas Keller --> back to superchefblog