Speaking English - How to order in a restaurant

Greetings, everyone.

My name is Rani, and today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite things ever, food.

Love it.

Actually the lesson is more of a functional lesson of ordering in a restaurant in North

America or in Europe, basically.

The first thing that we have to look at is the vocabulary and what you will find on the

menu when you open it up in a restaurant.

It's usually divided into sections depending on the quality of the restaurant.

It might just have five things and you choose one, but most restaurants divide it up.

The first one we say appetizers or they will say starters.

It depends on the restaurant, okay?

These are things like soups or salads or small portions of things, usually a lot of fried

food, sometimes chicken wings or spring rolls or bread, some sort of bruschetta bread.

Depends on the restaurant again.

So soups or salads are small portions just to give you something to eat while they're

cooking your food.

The next one is the main course or it might say mains or they might also try and be a

little fancy and use the word entrees.

Entrees is a French word.

It is not pronounced in trees.

In America they might say it like this, but in Canada and the proper way to say is entrees.

I'll help you with the spelling here with the pronunciation.

We would say it like this, entrees, okay?

You can put a little French accent if you desire.

Entrees is the main meat dish or if you're a vegetarian, the main vegetable dish.

Common ones would be roast beef, chicken curry, prime rib, a little bit of poached salmon.

These are the big dishes that are going to fill you up.

Then if you're not full or if you have a sweet tooth, there is the last, the end called desserts.

Desserts are very delicious, sweetie things like pie, cake, ice cream.

Are you hungry yet?

And then we also have drinks or beverages.

A lot of the times in the menu they'll say something like soft drinks.

In Canada we call it pop.

It'd be written on the menu, but we will say pop.

This is cola or coke, Pepsi, whatever, orange pop, ginger ale, whatever you choose to drink

as a fizzy drink or a pop.

So the very, very, very important thing and why I'm teaching you this is you have been

taught probably and it's been drilled into your head that food, especially when you order

in a restaurant, must be broken down into countable and non-countable items.

So you go through the list and it says chicken.

So your teacher tells you chicken.

Is chicken countable or uncountable?

Uncountable, countable, a chicken?

Can you eat a chicken?

Well, yeah, no.

Okay, so you have to say a piece of chicken, so confused, yeah.

Let me help you with this.

I'm going to make it the easiest way ever to order food and the way that we do it in

a restaurant.

We take this countable and non-countable vowels, nouns, and we go buh-bye and we do this.

We erase all the menu options.

So I'm looking at this menu and I decide on what I'd like to order.

Sometimes this takes me a while, but I will for sure like a starter.

We have soup of the day, which is chicken noodle, French onion, Caesar, Greek, or garden

salad.

It's cold in Canada, so I'm going to go for the French onion soup.

So the waitress would come to me and say, "What would you like?" and I'd say, "This."

I'll have the French onion soup.

French onion soup would be countable, so in grammar you'd say, "I'll have a French onion

soup."

Don't even worry about it.

Just say, "I'll have the."

Next you move on to your entrees.

I will definitely take the chicken curry because I love curry and I want it spicy.

So I will tell the waitress, "Okay, I'll have the chicken curry."

Are you understanding this?

I've eaten a lot, but I still would love to have some cheesecake.

So as my desserts, I'm going to say, "I'd like the cheesecake," and to drink, I will

just have some water, please, or a water.

So the very easy, easy, simple way for you guys to order in a restaurant, instead of

saying a, some, a piece of, a slice of, don't worry about that right now.

Just tell them, "I'll have the."

No matter where you are, people will understand the chicken.

Enjoy your time eating, and we'll see you next time.

Bye.