Name: The Vocabulary Show: Dining out - Learn 28 English words and phrases in 10 minutes!
Uploaded: 2024-01-16T21:01:30.000Z
Duration: 10 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Are you hungry to expand your English vocabulary?

Then grab a seat and get ready to chow down a lot of useful new English words and phrases.

From ordering your meal to paying the bill, we've got all the vocabulary that you need to navigate a restaurant like a true English pro.

We'll take a tour of the menu and explore some keywords and phrases that you will need if you are dining out in an English-speaking country.

So without any further ado, let's get ready to eat out.

Our first piece of vocabulary is the phrasal verb, eat out.

It is a common and relatively informal way to speak about going to a restaurant or cafe to eat and is usually used to talk about casual meals.

"I don't want to cook today. Let's eat out."

Personally, I like to cook dinner almost every day, but I do love to eat out at lunchtimes.

And my favorite place to eat out is in sushi restaurants.

Tell me in the comments, where is your favorite place to eat out?

So now we've decided to eat out, let's make a reservation.

This means to reserve a table or spot at a restaurant, and is usually used for popular restaurants, special occasions or for larger groups.

For example, "Should we make a reservation for Saturday night?"

A slightly less formal way of saying this is make a booking. An alternative form of make a reservation is reserve a table.

So we might say, "There's 10 of us. I think we should reserve a table."

If you go to a nice restaurant without a reservation, you might try asking, "Do you take walk-ins?"

And a walk-in is someone who visits a place without an appointment or reservation.

This can be used in restaurants but can also be used in other situations where you need a reservation or appointment, such as seeing a doctor or a lawyer.

There are many places where you do not need a reservation at all, and this includes at a fast food restaurant.

These are restaurants that specialize in cheap meals that are quick and easy to make and serve.

These are popular all over the world, and they tend to sell meals that we think of as rather unhealthy.

I try not to eat in fast food restaurants too often because I don't think they're good for my stomach or my diet, but they are very tempting and they are a lot more common than they were when I was young.

Has fast food culture came to your country?

And do you think that fast food restaurants are a good thing or a bad thing?

Next, we're going to look at cafes, and we're going to look at two very different types of cafe.

One is European style and one is a more British style.

A European style cafe is a small establishment that sells coffee, maybe some alcohol, maybe some snacks and a few bites to eat.

It is pronounced cafe and is spelt with an accent over the e, cafe.

A British cafe is a little bit different and can be pronounced as cafe or as caff.

A British caff often specializes in cheap fried food and would be the perfect place to find a traditional English breakfast.

We sometimes call these caffs a greasy spoon but maybe you don't feel like going to a cafe or a caff, you're a little bit hungrier than that and you want something substantial.

So why not try out the all-you-can-eat buffet?

This is a restaurant where you pay a set amount for an unlimited amount of food.

But let's get back to the restaurant where we made our original reservation and let's order a starter.

A starter is a small portion of food that you eat before your main meal.

For example, "We had the prawn cocktail as a starter."

Now you might hear speakers of American English call this an appetizer.

It is very, very similar, but here in the UK, in British English, we call it a starter.

Next, it's time to order the main. The main is the most important or biggest part of the meal.

For example, "For my main, I think I'll have steak and chips, please."

For example, "Angelica ordered the spaghetti bolognese as her main course."

Again, in British English, we would say main or main course, but in American or Canadian English, you are more likely to hear entrée.

English is a language where we often try to keep an element of the original language when we take a word.

So you can hear entrée has a touch of the original French where the word was taken from.

Now, when ordering a main or main course or an entrée, you might want to check whether the restaurant has a special available.

A special is a meal that is not on the usual menu.

This might be because the ingredients are seasonal, the chef wants to try something new, or because the restaurant wants to add a bit of variety and spice to the typical menu.

So you might hear something like," Today's special is chicken vindaloo."

So next time you are in a restaurant, why not try asking, "Do you have any specials?" and you might discover something wonderful.

We also commonly put the definite article "the" before the word special.

For example, "I'll try the special, please."

Wow. Learning all these new words has been thirsty work, hasn't it?

Now, if you don't want to spend too much money, you might want to order the house wine.

This is a relatively cheap wine option, and you won't know too much about it until it arrives.

The only thing you are likely to know is that it costs less than the other wines on the menu.

But maybe you don't drink or you don't want to drink alcohol. What should you order then?

It is usually served cold, has bubbles and contains sugar and a natural or artificial flavor like orange or lemon or cherry, for example.

Or maybe you want to stay very healthy, and you can order a sparkling water.

This is carbonated water that has lots of bubbles in it.

You might also hear it called fizzy water.

But wow, I am hungry. In fact, I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse.

"I could eat a horse" is an idiom, meaning that you are very, very hungry.

You can use the full idiom, "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse,"  or you can use the shortened phrase, "I could eat the horse."

Ah, the food has finally arrived. Let's eat.

Before we start our meal, we need to decide which cutlery we need to use.

Cutlery are the tools that we use to eat.

So let's go through some of the most common ones.

To serve a soup from the middle of the table, you might use a ladle.

So we've used the correct utensils to finish our starter and our main.

And now it's time for my favorite part of the meal: the dessert.

Dessert is a sweet dish served at the end of a meal.

If you're talking about your individual dessert, it is uncountable.

But if you're talking about different types of dessert, it becomes countable.

We had three different types of dessert between us.

We had a nice starter, a lovely main and a delicious dessert.

We had some fantastic drinks, but now unfortunately, it is time to get the bill.

A bill is a written or printed statement given to you by the restaurant that shows you how much money you owe for the drinks and food you have just consumed.

So at the end of the meal, you might catch the eye of the waiter and ask, "Can I get the bill, please?"

In American English, you are more likely to hear the word check.

It's time to pay and now comes the decision on whether you want to split the bill.

Split the bill is when you pay evenly between all the members at the table.

So if there are five people and the bill is £100, everybody puts in £20.