I am a native Spanish speaker from the Canary Islands. It's is quite clear that the author is learning mainland Spain's Spanish, as he uses "patata" for potato,

I am a native Spanish speaker from the Canary Islands. It's is quite clear that the author is learning mainland Spain's Spanish, as he uses "patata" for potato, instead of "papa", which I believe is used everywhere else. There, those phrases are quite common ones to use for that situations.