British tourists overrun Nerja, Spain in summer.
According to Gordon Ramsey, they aren’t there for the Spanish culture, art or food. They just hang around the beaches, party hard, get sunburned and go home.
Gordon Ramsey is a famous celebrity chef with a potty-mouth. A recent show of his grabbed my attention because he was in Costa del Sol, Spain on a mission. He had just 7 days to turn the disastrous restaurant La Parra de Burriana into a success,
His show is Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. In this episode, boy did he have his work cut out for him. There was bad food; bad service and even worse the place was dirty.
During the show the restaurant dog even left a deposit on the floor.
¡Que asco! (How disgusting!)
The doors only stayed open because of the one-time tourist customers, the locals wouldn’t even touch this place.
And the place just didn’t function. People were waiting over an hour to get served.
¡Dios mio! (My god!)
What caused this disaster?
And could Gordon possibly fix this in just 7 days?
It turns out the solution was quite simple.
The unmanageable menu was a big cause of all the sloppiness. It had 72 items. The owner/chef was so busy trying to manage this extensive menu that he screwed up everything.
He even tried to cook everything on the same large griddle. The vegetables tasted like meat. The eggs tasted like meat. The meat tasted like c*&p.
Gordon designed a new menu of 5 starters and 6 main courses.
This reduced menu had fewer items, less ingredients and he sourced the ingredients locally for freshness and quality.
With the new easy to use menu the chef could cook in pans instead of cooking everything on a hotplate.
No more running around like a headless chicken
No more hour-long waits for the guests.
Best of all, the food was good and fresh.
And of course they cleaned up the dog droppings as well.
Gordon’s formula of a reduced menu works every time. Some people even call it the 80/20 Rule.
Focus on the 20% that gives you 80% of the results.
Most Spanish classes are just like this Kitchen Nightmare. The menu is just too big and confusing.
There’s too much conjugation, too much grammar, too much analysis and too little speaking of Spanish.
Es ridiculo!
The solution to speaking Spanish is not more overwhelm. The solution is to focus on speaking Spanish in the real world.
Just do what works.
Synergy Spanish is a road guide to simplifying your Spanish and cutting to the chase of what works.
If you’ve taken a class, started a textbook or participated in a course that made you feel overwhelmed, Synergy Spanish is the solution.
It’ll show you how to speak real Spanish you can take out and use anywhere Spanish is spoken.
Here are the first two lessons from Synergy Spanish to simplify your Spanish life and get you on the road to speaking the language.
Hi I agree with all you say about being swamped by the verbs etc but my problem is that where I live they speak a Dialect of Spanish that is really difficult to understand. They do not pronounce the ‘s’ in words and of course they speak very fast, listening to Spanish on a MP3, or some recorded medium is not a great help because they speak ‘proper’ Spanish and much more slowly.
The only way is to get out there in the street and listen to the ‘local’ dialect, which unfortunately is very difficult, of course with a knowledge of the language it is possible to pick up a few words and maybe get the gist but it is not an easy thing learning a language and I believe all aids to doing so should be applied.
can understand so much Spanish, it amazes me/.
The big problem is getting it to come out of my mouth making sense.
keep getting frustrated,but i have to keep returning to this beautiful language.
So thanks a million for making it simple,restarting now to learn your method
Joan Rushton
Hehe – just loved this posting since I have an apartment in Nerja. I see the point.
Although I’m there for the climate, the wonderful nature which includes both the coast and the mountains, I’m also there for the Spanish culture. That’s why I work quite diligently on my Spanish and enjoy Marcus’ courses where I’m now at the Advanced Concepts Intensive.
Muchas gracias, Marcus. Buen trabajo. Saludos.