Dialogue: Ordering at a Café

Ordering a coffee is one of the first real transactions you'll make in Romanian, and it hinges on a single grammatical choice that separates the tourist from someone who sounds at home: do you say the blunt Vreau o cafea ("I want a coffee") or the smooth Aș dori o cafea ("I'd like a coffee")? Romanian, like English, softens requests through the conditional mood — aș dori, aș vrea ("I'd like / I'd want") — and pairs it with the all-purpose courtesy tag vă rog ("please"). Get those two right and the rest of the café is easy.

This page presents a short ordering dialogue, then walks through it line by line. Along the way you'll meet the polite conditional, the indefinite article on a drink (o cafea), the two price questions Cât costă? and Cât face?, and the way Romanians ask for the bill (Nota, vă rog).

The dialogue

A customer (Clientul) steps up to the counter; the barista (Barista) takes the order. Both use the polite dumneavoastră register, as is normal between strangers in a café.

Line by line

Aș dori / aș vrea — the polite conditional

The heart of café etiquette is aș dori ("I would like") and its slightly more casual twin aș vrea ("I'd like / I'd want"). Both are conditional forms — built from the conditional auxiliary aș ("I would") plus the infinitive dori / vrea. The conditional turns a flat statement of desire into a hypothetical, hedged request, which is exactly the politeness move English makes with "would": Vreau ("I want") becomes Aș vrea ("I would want / I'd like"), just as English softens "I want" into "I'd like."

The full conditional auxiliary set is aș, ai, ar, am, ați, ar; for ordering you almost always need only the first-person aș. Note that a dori feels a touch more refined than a vrea — it's the verb on menus and in waiters' mouths (Ce doriți?, "What would you like?") — but both are perfectly polite in the conditional.

o cafea, un croasant — the indefinite article

When you name what you want, Romanian marks it with the indefinite article: o for feminine nouns, un for masculine/neuter ones. Cafea ("coffee") is feminine, so it takes o cafea; croasant ("croissant") is neuter, so it takes un croasant. This is the opposite habit from naming your profession, where Romanian drops the article (Sunt profesor) — but for a countable object you're ordering, the article is required.

The article also carries number: o cafea is "a/one coffee," and you can lean on it to mean exactly one. When the noun is dropped (because it's obvious), the article becomes a stand-alone pronoun and inflects for gender: una ("a feminine one"), unul ("a masculine one"). In the dialogue, the customer answers Mică sau mare? with Una mare — "a large one (fem.)," because cafea is feminine.

vă rog — the courtesy tag

Vă rog ("please," literally "I beg you," with the polite plural object vă) is the universal politeness marker, dropped in at the end — or occasionally the start — of any request. With a friend you'd use the singular te rog ("please," literally "I beg you," singular). It also doubles as "you're welcome" in some regions and as "go ahead / after you" (Vă rog!) when holding a door.

Because vă rog already encodes the polite dumneavoastră, keep the rest of the sentence in the same register: polite vă rog pairs with polite verb forms (doriți, vă aduc), never with the casual tu. See tu / dumneavoastră.

Cât costă? / Cât face? — asking the price

There are two everyday ways to ask "how much is it?":

• Cât costă? — "how much does it cost?" (the verb a costa, "to cost")
• Cât face? — "how much does it come to?" (literally "how much does it make?")

Both are completely natural; Cât costă? is the more neutral, Cât face? slightly more colloquial and common when totting up a total. For a specific item you can add the noun: Cât costă cafeaua? ("How much is the coffee?"), with the definite form cafeaua because you mean the (specific) coffee on the menu.

optsprezece lei — the price and the currency

Prices are stated as [number] + lei. Lei is the plural of leu (the currency, literally "lion"), and crucially it stays in the plural with any number above one: doi lei, cinci lei, optsprezece lei, o sută de lei. Only un leu ("one leu") is singular. Note that from twenty up, the number is joined to lei by de: douăzeci de lei ("twenty lei") — the same number+de+noun rule you meet at the market.

Nota, vă rog — paying

To ask for the bill you say Nota, vă rog or Plata, vă rog ("the bill / the payment, please") — both with the definite article baked in (nota = "the bill," plata = "the payment"), because you mean the bill for your specific table. To specify how you'll pay: plătesc cu cardul ("I'll pay by card," definite cardul) or plătesc cash / numerar ("I'll pay cash").

Common Mistakes

Using the blunt present Vreau where the polite conditional is expected:

Dropping the indefinite article before the drink, copying the bare English "coffee, please":

Mismatching the gender of the dropped-noun pronoun:

Putting lei in the singular after a plural number:

Asking for the bill without the definite article, on the English model "bill, please":

Key Takeaways

• Open every order with the conditional: Aș dori / Aș vrea
  • the item, not the blunt Vreau.
• Countable items take the indefinite article: o cafea (fem.), un croasant (neut.); a dropped noun leaves the gendered pronoun una / unul.
• Vă rog ("please") tags any request and keeps you in the polite dumneavoastră register.
• Ask the price with Cât costă? or Cât face?; prices are stated in lei (plural with any number above one), with de before the noun from twenty up.
• Ask for the bill with the definite Nota / Plata, vă rog, and name your method: plătesc cu cardul / cash.