And the food? The cod dish of the day was splendid. No one spoke English which says it all about this unashamedly Canarian restaurant. In fact, only the staff have their own crib sheets. There are no international menu translations. The high ceiling is augmented with suspended soundboards. The atmosphere is well worth it.the audible hum of conversation with no loud voiceovers.The room itself is a cross between a garage and a schoolroom with a mix of chairs and benches. This form of eating lasted into the 20th century.Try and get a seat in the large eating area to the right as you enter. Accompanied by starchy foods like bread or potatoes, however, the traveller might go to bed well satisfied.

Having usually been boiled many times over, it was safe enough, and often tasty, though its nutritional value was often low. The poorer traveller might have to do with 'pot luck', a stew of whatever was left over from the fare of the last few days or weeks. A wealthy traveller might ask what the hosteller had to offer to eat, and be told 'chicken', or 'beef' etc., and choose it. By extension, a more general meaning is 'whatever is available in a particular circumstance or at a particular time.' The most common usage was within inns, taverns, and staging posts in the United Kingdom from the 16th century onwards. whatever food happens to be available, especially when offered to a guest. As this shows, the original meaning was 'food given away to guests', probably derived from 'whatever food one is lucky enough to find in the pot', i.e. The earliest written citation is from 1592: ' That that pure sanguine complexion of yours may never be famisht with pot lucke,' Thomas Nashe. It is a portmanteau word formed from (cooking) pot and lucke. I'd love other suggestions.įolk etymology has derived the term 'potluck' from the Native American custom of potlatch the word 'potluck', however, is actually of English origin. This is actually my own invention, since gatherings of people where each person is expected to bring a dish of food to be shared among the group don't seem to be as common in Latin America and as far as I know there is not a set term for them.

Pot luck in spanish