English Podcasts |

The Restaurant - Episode 5 - Paying the Bill

It is the end of the meal, dessert has been eaten and coffee has been ordered, now it is time to pay the bill.

Listen to Chris and Sue talk about their meal and the service that they received in the restaurant.

One of the most difficult aspects in learning and using English in a social setting is eating and drinking in the restaurant, which is obviously vital for survival, but in a business context is a hugely important part of relationship building with clients, colleagues and suppliers.

The main difficulties arise from the vocabulary used to describe foods and drinks and the way that they are prepared, but an additional issue is the background noise that is often present in eateries and places where people go to eat and drink.

There is also the fact that the conversation can change from subject to subject very quickly, so as a learner you need to be constantly on your toes - and hopefully enjoy the experience.

In this series on The Restaurant, you will learn some useful ways of asking questions, describing foods, tastes and drinks as well as a host of vocabulary and real English to talk about food and drink.

Series 1 starts with two people meeting in a restaurant for dinner, they then go into the restaurant to take their place at the table they reserved only to find a disagreeable surprise.

The following section takes us to discussing the food and drink on a typical menu in a British Gastro pub, where food is served to clients, known as diners.

The two diners are greeted by a less than friendly and pretty unprofessional waitress, who tends to their needs from their entrance into the restaurant until the point where they pay their bill, in The Restaurant - Episode 5 - Paying the Bill.

Along the way they battle their way through some of the, often ambiguous descriptions on the menu to a few surprises with the food that they order.

There are some simple quizzes that you can take at the end of each podcast to check your understanding - if you like these then please sign up for premium membership where you will find over 120 hours of stimulating activities for each podcast series on this site.

Listen to Sue and Chris being served food and drink in the restaurant.

Here is one of the dishes that they ordered.

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The Restaurant - Episode 3 - Ordering Food

Ordering food can be tricky, but sometimes the waiting staff are on hand to help.

Listen to Sue and Chris and a particularly difficult waitress as they decide what to order for dinner.

One of the most difficult aspects in learning and using English in a social setting is eating and drinking in the restaurant, which is obviously vital for survival, but in a business context is a hugely important part of relationship building with clients, colleagues and suppliers.

The main difficulties arise from the vocabulary used to describe foods and drinks and the way that they are prepared, but an additional issue is the background noise that is often present in eateries and places where people go to eat and drink.

There is also the fact that the conversation can change from subject to subject very quickly, so as a learner you need to be constantly on your toes - and hopefully enjoy the experience.

In this series on The Restaurant, you will learn some useful ways of asking questions, describing foods, tastes and drinks as well as a host of vocabulary and real English to talk about food and drink.

Series 1 starts with two people meeting in a restaurant for dinner, they then go into the restaurant to take their place at the table they reserved only to find a disagreeable surprise.

The following section takes us to discussing the food and drink on a typical menu in a British Gastro pub, where food is served to clients, known as diners.

The two diners are greeted by a less than friendly and pretty unprofessional waitress, who tends to their needs from their entrance into the restaurant until the point where they pay their bill.

Along the way they battle their way through some of the, often ambiguous descriptions on the menu to a few surprises with the food that they order.

There are some simple quizzes that you can take at the end of each podcast to check your understanding - if you like these then please sign up for premium membership where you will find over 120 hours of stimulating activities for each podcast series on this site.

A meal in an English pub

A meal in an English pub is a great way to meet up with friends for an informal chat, drink and to have something to eat.

However, as you will hear, pubs can be busy and noisy places and are sometimes not the best place to have a conversation - but this podcast is a real-life situation, where Chris and Stéphane went to a busy pub in Victoria, London, England.

Bar snacks: Even pubs that don't serve meals have a few salty bar snacks available - crisps in a range of flavors, packets of peanuts, and pork scratchings - and sometimes big glass jars of pickled eggs and pickled onions.

Bar food or bar menu: Some pubs that serve lunch and dinner may also have a bar menu of sandwiches through the day. Bar food is only prepared once and is only available as long as it lasts.

Pub meals: Better pubs serve lunches and dinners during set hours. These range from basic, acceptable food to the highest reaches of gastronomy. Several gastropubs, so-called, have even achieved multiple Michelin stars.

Pub meals can be cheaper than traditional restaurant meals but whether they are better value depends on your taste. You may love a Sunday Roast - meat, potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and vegetables. Or you may find it overcooked and tasteless - depends on the pub and depends on you. Nevertheless, there are some pub dishes you can usually count on including:

Sausages and Mash, using locally made, butcher's sausages

Fish and chips

Steak and ale or steak and kidney pies

Ploughman's lunches - salad with a hunk of local cheese and bread. Ham or chicken may be included.

Be careful though, the closing hours are much earlier than in continental Europe and elsewhere and most pubs stop serving food at or before 9pm in the evening, so get there early!

Some pubs also do early eaters deals where two people eat for the price of one - if you like eating early, this may be for you.

While listening listen out for how the the following was expressed :

How did Chris say that he had not met Stéphane for a long time.

How did Chris ask Stéphane what he had been doing since they last met?

How did Chris ask Stéphane about how he feels about his upcoming holidays?

How did Chris ask Stéphane if he would like a starter?

How did Chris ask Stéphane if he wanted a main course?

How did Chris ask Stéphane about what came with his meal?

What type of water did they order?

Regional food: Derbyshire

All countries have regional food specialities; France is famous for its regional cuisine and world wide renowned foods but what about the UK ? What types of dishes do you associate with the UK ?

Sue is from Derbyshire and she has a bit of difficulty trying to name 5 regional specialities ! 

Do you know where Derbyshire is ? Google it to find out !!!

She mentions 5 regional specialities, listen to the podcast and then take a look at these pictures and try to find the correct name for each dish.

 How does Sue describe this tart?

 

What does Sue really like about this meal ?

 

 What makes this cheese so green ?

 

 

When do we eat this particular cheese ?

 What does Chris say about this Northern speciality? 

 Where is this beer brewed ?

The Foods We miss from home part 2 - When living away from home, your tastes change and you learn to adapt to the local food and end up loving it in most cases.

That said, we can still miss some of the food from back home and from time to time, get a craving for those tastes.

Now, I'm not saying that French food is not good - far from it - but no matter how long you are away from home, you still may get a mad desire to eat the foods that you grew up with and this is the theme of today's podcast.

You may even find that when you eventually get hold of the foods from back home.

You know the ones that you craved, they may have an anti-climax effect on you and you realise that your mind has been playing tricks on you and you don't really like them as much as you thought you did.

When we first came to France, it was virtually impossible to find any of the food that we ate back in the UK, however, many are now available in bigger cities or where there is a concentration of expats.

At times when we cannot find the foods that we crave, we have the choice to either make them ourselves, where possible, or to substitue French foods for those that we miss.

Examples are making my own clotted cream - a long process, but well worth it!

Substituting 'Poitrine fumé' for bacon and using Toulouse sausages in place of English sausages, for when you just cannot go without an English breakfast.

There are certain things that cannot be substituted though, such as Marmite - I mean nothing comes close - although some would question why anyone would seek out Marmite. As Brits, we also miss two favourite British meals ; Indian curry and Fish & Chips.

Fish and chips and curry are available in France, but sorry France, they're not as good as back in the UK!

The first part is here

The Foods We miss from The UK When living away from home, your tastes change and you learn to adapt to the local food and end up loving it in most cases.

That said, we can still miss some of the food from back home and from time to time, get a craving for those tastes.

Now, I'm not saying that French food is not good - far from it - but no matter how long you are away from home, you still may get a mad desire to eat the foods that you grew up with and this is the theme of today's podcast.

You may even find that when you eventually get hold of the foods from back home.

You know the ones that you craved, they may have an anti-climax effect on you and you realise that your mind has been playing tricks on you and you don't really like them as much as you thought you did.

When we first came to France, it was virtually impossible to find any of the food that we ate back in the UK, however, many are now available in bigger cities or where there is a concentration of expats.

At times when we cannot find the foods that we crave, we have the choice to either make them ourselves, where possible, or to substitue French foods for those that we miss.

Examples are making my own clotted cream - a long process, but well worth it!

Substituting 'Poitrine fumé' for bacon and using Toulouse sausages in place of English sausages, for when you just cannot go without an English breakfast.

There are certain things that cannot be substituted though, such as Marmite - I mean nothing comes close - although some would question why anyone would seek out Marmite. As Brits, we also miss two favourite British meals ; Indian curry and Fish & Chips.

Fish and chips and curry are available in France, but sorry France, they're not as good as back in the UK!

Molecular gastronomy is a subdiscipline of food science that seeks to investigate the physical and chemical transformations of ingredients that occur in cooking.

Its program includes three areas, as cooking was recognized to have three components, which are social, artistic and technical. Molecular cuisine is a modern style of cooking, and takes advantage of many technical innovations from the scientific disciplines.

The term "molecular gastronomy" was coined in 1988 by late Oxford physicist Nicholas Kurti and the French INRA chemist Hervé This.

Some chefs associated with the term choose to reject its use, preferring other terms such as multi-sensory cooking, modernist cuisine, culinary physics, and experimental cuisine, but they often confuse molecular gastronomy (science) and molecular cooking (technique) or molecular cuisine (the culinary trend based on using molecular gastronomy).

Ferran Adria may not be the creator of the term molecular gastronomy (in fact, he dislikes the term to refer to what he does) but he is responsible for the first major revolution in cooking since the nouvelle cuisine insurrection in the 1970s and 80s.

His base of operations is the El Bulli restaurant in northern Spain close to Barcelona which opens only 6 months a year and functions solely as an experimental lab the rest of the time.

Ferran Adria’s creativity and innovations usually arise from asking questions like why do we have coffee followed by an egg at breakfast, while at lunch we eat the egg first and then drink the coffee?

By answering these questions or at least trying, he may discover unusual flavors and aromas that pair well with each other, new ingredients and chemicals and lab equipment that could aid him in the kitchen.

He also learns from the food industry. In many cases, the techniques and chemicals he uses have been applied in the food industry for years but his creativity and imagination allow Ferran Adria to apply them in a new magical way that will surprise diners.

Listen to Susan ask Chris about his passion for cookery and his experiments and experiences with mollecular cuisine.