Ordering At An Italian Restaurant

Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod.

My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and we have a delicious Italian food lesson for you today.

That's right.

We are at an Italian restaurant and we are ordering food.

So this is going to be very helpful next time you are at an Italian restaurant with your

friends and you're ordering up some dishes.

Let's take a listen to our dialogue and we'll be back in a moment to talk about what's going

on.

Good evening ladies.

My name is Josh and I'll be your server tonight.

May I take your order?

Do you have any recommendations?

Well, I personally like the chicken penne with cream mushroom sauce.

But the prawn fettuccine is also very nice.

I'd like to have the grilled chicken.

But can I have spaghetti instead of penne?

Of course, ma'am.

And for you?

I'll have the horse tripe.

All right, we're back and now let's take a look at all those delicious Italian dishes

on Language Takeaway.

So first of all, we have two different kinds of sauce really.

The first is cream mushroom.

So what's a cream sauce, Marco?

A cream mushroom sauce.

So basically, this is cream from milk and you have mushrooms in it.

And I don't know, I think everyone has seen it.

It's a very thick white sauce.

It has little slices of mushrooms in it.

It's kind of sweet.

That's right.

And so oftentimes you see there's a lot of cream in it.

And so oftentimes you see there's cream sauces, which are white, and tomato sauces, which

are red.

And this here is a cream sauce, so it's white and it's got chunks of mushroom in it.

Very tasty.

And the waiter also offered prawn with the pasta.

So what is a prawn?

Prawn fettuccine.

So prawn is like a big, it's like a word for shrimp.

I always think of jumbo prawns, which are these big, big, big shrimps.

So they're basically the same thing.

Shrimp and prawn are basically the same.

That's right.

And they're a seafood that when they get cooked, they curl.

So they look like a circle, but they're pinkish or red.

That's right.

They're very tasty.

Okay, so now let's take a look at the different types of pasta.

So we have three different types of pasta that the waiter suggested.

So the first one is...

Okay, we're going to say all three in the American way, but I'm going to tell you the

Italian way is quite different.

So I'll say that afterwards.

The first is penne.

Okay.

So this is a type of pasta.

What does it look like?

It is like a small tube.

So maybe three centimeters long, and it is round and it has a hole in the middle.

And so it's a kind of pasta.

And what about the fettuccine?

So fettuccine is a long noodle, but it's flat.

It's not round, it's flat.

Fettuccine.

So it kind of looks like a shoelace.

Yeah, it's long and flat.

And then we have spaghetti, which I think many people know, and this is probably the

most popular one.

That's right.

Spaghetti is very long, just like fettuccine, but it's very, very thin and round.

So it kind of looks like maybe a pencil, a very long pencil.

But very thin, more like hair, actually.

And there are thin kinds, so they have a special name.

But this is just a normal pasta that you will see everywhere.

It's very long and you can twirl it.

You can spin it around your fork.

Okay, so that's what we have.

We have penne, fettuccine, and spaghetti.

Now, the other woman ended up ordering horse tripe.

Now this is also another Italian dish.

What is this exactly?

Well, horse is the animal, so this is tripe that comes from a horse.

But tripe is a certain part of the animal that we, it's a food name actually.

So when we eat the stomach lining, the part of the stomach that goes around the stomach,

it's kind of squishy, soft.

That is called tripe.

And you can have tripe from many different animals, like cows or pigs.

But in this case, it's horse tripe.

So it's basically that thick piece of like spongy material around the animal's stomach.

When you cook it, it looks very funny.

So this is actually a famous Italian dish as well, right?

I think so.

I think they eat it in the South more, but you can definitely get tripe in a lot of different

places in Italy.

Okay, very good.

So there you have it.

A lot of different dishes, Italian dishes.

We've taken a look at a couple of pasta dishes.

Why don't we take a break, listen to the dialogue again, and we'll be back with Fluency Builder.

Good evening, ladies.

My name is Josh and I'll be your server tonight.

May I take your order?

Do you have any recommendations?

Well, I personally like the chicken penne with cream mushroom sauce, but the prawn fettuccine

is also very nice.

I'd like to have the grilled chicken, but can I have spaghetti instead of penne?

Of course, ma'am.

And for you?

I'll have the horse tripe.

All right, we're back.

So now we're going to give you three key phrases from Fluency Builder.

Fluency Builder.

So the phrases we have selected for you today are phrases that you are sure to hear anytime

you go to a restaurant in America or any other English speaking country.

Basically, you have a waiter who comes to you if you sit down and this is what they'll

say.

The first thing they'll say is, I'll be your server.

I'll be your server tonight.

So he introduces himself.

He says, good evening, ladies.

My name is Josh and I'll be your server tonight.

So when he's saying, I'll be your server, it's another way of saying, I'll be your waiter.

Your waiter, that's right.

But server can be a man or a woman.

And a waiter can only be a man.

If it's a woman, it's a waitress.

Okay.

So waitress for a woman, waiter for a guy.

But if you use server, it's for men and women.

Yes, I'll be your server.

And I just like to remind you that this is more common in America because in America,

waiters and waitresses or servers, they have to earn tips and so they're very nice.

Aha.

Okay.

So this is why they introduce themselves.

They are very nice to you.

And then they ask, may I take your order?

May I take your order?

So the verb to take here doesn't mean to take it from you.

It means to ask you and then they'll write it down.

Okay.

So the server will ask you what you want to order and then we'll write it down.

And the order is what you have decided to eat.

So that's the food that you order.

Now this next phrase is very, very handy, especially if you're in a country that maybe

you don't know the dishes well or if you're in a restaurant that you want to see what

they recommend.

You can just say, do you have any recommendations?

Do you have any recommendations?

Okay.

So this is a way to ask the server what's good.

So what he thinks is good or what the restaurant serves very well.

Okay.

So you could say, I've never been to this restaurant before.

Do you have any recommendations?

Or maybe even, you know, Marco, we're having dinner and I know that you really like Italian

food and I don't know much about Italian food.

So I can ask you, do you have any recommendations?

Okay.

So this is a way of asking what is good here.

What is delicious in this restaurant?

What's good to eat.

Okay.

All right.

So three phrases there for you.

Why don't we take another short break and let's listen to the dialogue for the last

time.

Good evening, ladies.

My name is Josh and I'll be your server tonight.

May I take your order?

Do you have any recommendations?

Well, I personally like the chicken penne with cream mushroom sauce, but the prawn fettuccine

is also very nice.

I'd like to have the grilled chicken, but can I have spaghetti instead of penne?

Of course, ma'am.

And for you?

I, uh, I'll have the horse tripe.

All right.

So talking about pasta.

Now one thing before you mentioned that all these different types of pasta, they're basically

the same thing.

They're just different shapes, right?

That's how you distinguish them.

Well, yeah, they're, they're basically made from the same ingredients.

And so you have, most of them are kind of a yellow color, but sometimes you have pastas

that are a dark, like a brown or a green that depends on what kind of things you put into

the dough.

But generally they're the same ingredients, but they are different shapes.

Like they have curly ones and they have long ones and short ones.

All right.

So how do you pronounce, uh, we said penne in, uh, in English, in American English, but

in proper Italian, it would be penne.

So you, you, you double pronounce the consonant.

What about fettuccine?

Fettuccine.

Oh, it's fettuccine.

Fettuccine.

Um, in, in American, we say, uh, fettuccine.

Fettuccine.

Like fettuccine Alfredo is a very common American Italian dish, but in Italian it'd

be fettuccine.

So you might hear it differently.

And what about spaghetti?

Spaghetti.

Spaghetti.

Oh, you pronounce the double T as well.

That's right.

Okay.

So, uh, you said that, uh, obviously there are a lot of other types of pasta.

What about this pasta that's, uh, I think it's made of spinach.

It's green.

Yeah, that's, uh, that's just a spinach pasta.

Oh, okay.

So they put the spinach in the dough.

Um, but you can also find very many, um, shapes like the angel hair pasta is very popular.

It's very thin.

That's the one I was saying is it's almost like hair.

It's so thin.

It's very, it's long as well.

What about those little curly tubes?

Um, you, they look like penne, but they're kind of curved.

They look like little, uh, ends or you have, um, macaroni, macaroni, elbow macaroni.

We call them in America and they look like your elbow on your arm.

So we call them elbow macaroni.

What about the ones that are, um, they have like a spiral, they kind of look like springs.

Those are called fusilli.

Fusilli.

Uh huh.

Yeah.

And you also have one that's very special.

This is my favorite pasta, by the way.

It's called orecchiette.

Oh, what is this?

Orecchiette.

And they look like your ear.

And that's what that means in Italian.

It means your little ear.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So ear pastas.

Wow.

And what about ravioli?

This is probably one of the most, uh, famous, uh, dishes.

Ravioli.

What, what is this?

A ravioli is like a square.

It's like a square pasta.

But it's more like a pocket or a pillow.

And inside you have ingredients like meat or cheese usually is very popular.

Right.

So you have this cheese inside this little, this little packet.

This little, yeah.

This little dough.

It's very soft and very warm.

And then on top sometimes people like to put butter or tomato sauce.

Okay.

It's really delicious.

So that's the main difference, like, this was obviously, all the pastas that we mentioned,

they're just, uh, they don't have anything inside them.

No, they're just dough.

And a ravioli is a special kind of pasta that's like a, it's almost like a dumpling in a way.

It's, it's stuffed.

It has something inside.

It has things inside.

All right.

Really interesting.

I think Italian cuisine is among one of the most famous foods in the world.

And, uh, well you should let us know if, what is your favorite Italian dish?

Please let us know.

Our website is EnglishPod.com and when you're there you could find out what our favorite

dishes are.

All right.

We'll see you guys there.

Bye.

Bye everyone.