Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha.
In this lesson, I'm going to talk about some quick responses to questions about food. These will be a series of common questions that we ask when we're ready to go out to eat somewhere.
So, let's get started!
Okay. First, let's take a look at the questions for this lesson. These are all questions about eating something, usually going to a restaurant or going to a cafe or a bar or something to eat food, but some of these could be used to talk about something you want to make at home.
So first, “What do you want to eat?”
“What do you want to eat?”
At native speed, this sounds like, “What do you wanna eat?”
“What do you wanna eat?”
So, “What do you want to eat?” just means what's the type of food or what is the dish that you want to eat or it can also mean which restaurant do you want to eat at?
The second question, “What sounds good?”
“What sounds good?”
When we're talking about food, this means what do you want to eat or what type of food or what, like, dish sounds delicious to you now? What do you think sounds good to eat? What would you like to eat? That's what this means here.
We can use this question in other situations, like when we're choosing, like a movie to watch, like, “Oh, what sounds good?” means like what do you like now?
In this case, we're talking about food.
Next question is similar, “What do you feel like?”
So this question, “What do you feel like?” this does not, like, have anything to do with your emotions. This is not a question about your feelings or your emotions. it doesn't mean like what is the feeling of your body or what is the feeling of something. It means, what do you want to eat? So, just like, “What sounds good?” it means what kind of thing do you want to eat? What do you feel like eating is another way to understand this question. So, what are your feelings now about food, specifically? So, we understand these based on context.
One more very similar, “What are you in the mood for?”
So, a very casual expression. This is your mood about food. So, in the office, your co-worker might say, “Let's get lunch. What are you in the mood for?”
“What are you in the mood for?”
Native speed:
“What are you in the mood for?”
So, what kind of food do you want to eat?
Finally:
“Where do you want to go for lunch (or dinner)?”
Of course, you could use breakfast or drinks or whatever here, but this is a “where” question. So, this is a question you use specifically when you're talking about going someplace.
These are what questions that you can use more specifically to talk about the type of food.
But we can answer all of these questions with these responses.
Also, one more time, at native speed, this question sounds like:
“Where do you wanna go for lunch?”
“Where do you wanna go for dinner?”
So, it's very fast.
“Where do you wanna go for lunch?”
“Where do you wanna go for dinner?”
So, how do we answer these questions?
We can answer by giving a suggestion. We can use, “how about…”
[How about] + [a cuisine]
So, a cuisine means like a country's or a region's food, the name of the region or the name of the country, or we can use a dish name. So, let's look at cuisines, for example, when we give a suggestion.
“How about Italian?”
“How about Chinese?”
“How about Indian?”
“How about Thai?”
“How about Korean?”
So, these are like countries. They have a very specific style of food and we can suggest it with the simple “how about” pattern.
We can also do this with dishes. When you do this, just be conscious. Think about, is this dish a countable noun or uncountable noun. So, we need to think about this.
For example:
“How about a salad?”
So, “salad” is- we're talking about one dish, a salad.
Or, “How about soup?”
Generally, we use “soup” as an uncountable noun.
“How about a burger?”
You might also hear this used in the plural form.
“How about burgers?”
Or, “How about curry?” (uncountable)
“How about pasta?” (uncountable)
So, we can use the dish name here too to give a suggestion.
These two, you can use if you have no particular feelings.
You can say:
“I don't know.”
“I don't know.”
Like, “What do you wanna eat?”
“I don't know.”
Or, “What sounds good?”
“I don't know.”
So, you have no ideas. You could say, “I don't know” or this one, “doesn't matter to me,” doesn't matter to me. This means it's not important to me. I will choose whatever you're happy with. At native speed, this sounds like, “Doesn't matter to me.” Doesn't matter to me. So, very fast. “Doesn't matter to me.”
So, don't use, “I don't care,” unless you're with someone very close, because it sounds like you have no feelings about the situation and maybe you don't want to be there, either.
So, I would recommend one of these.
“It doesn't matter to me.”
Or maybe, “I'm not particular.”
That sounds a little more formal.
So this one is good, “It doesn't matter to me.”
If you want to be specific about the location and you want to talk about the quality of the location, you can use this pattern:
Someplace + [adjective]
So, “Where do you wanna go to eat?”
Or, “What do you wanna eat?”
You can say:
“Someplace cheap.”
So, this is- this is a place one, yes. You can change this [place] to [thing] as well. If a question is like a “what” question, you can be more specific and say something cheap, something fast, something fancy, something quiet. If the question is about location, you can use [place] here. So something quick, something fast, or someplace cheap, some place fast, whatever.
So, in most cases, they will be the same, like for example, a fast food restaurant is probably cheap and fast and we can use either place. But if you want to describe the food, so someone says “What do you want to eat?” you can say “Something cheap.”
If you want to talk about the place, because the question is where, you can use “someplace.”
So, “Where do you wanna go for lunch?”
“Someplace cheap.”
“What do you wanna eat?”
“Something cheap.”
So, what question (thing), where question (place).
So, we can use an adjective in this pattern.
So, “Something fast.”
Or “Something cheap would be good.”
“Something quiet would be nice.”
So, you can kind of choose based on the feeling of the place that you want to go to.
Okay.
You can also use this pattern:
“Let's go somewhere with [noun phrase].
So again, this is one that you can use primarily to answer this “where” question.
“Let's go somewhere with [noun phrase].”
So, this “with,” yes, you can use this to talk about another person, like:
“Let's go somewhere with our co-worker.”
“Let's go somewhere with our boss.”
But you can also use this as a way to talk about a specific thing, a specific, like, feature of a restaurant. So a [noun phrase].
“Let's go somewhere with a nice view.”
“Let's go somewhere with good coffee.”
“Let's go somewhere with vegetarian food.”
So, “let's go somewhere,” this means the speaker doesn't have, like a specific idea, maybe, but the speaker wants these things. So, maybe, food is not so important, but now, these kinds of things are important, these other like noun phrases. So sometimes, there's like a specific type of restaurant you want to visit and the food is not so important. So, this is how you can express that.
Another thing you can say, this is really useful again for this one, but you can use it to respond to the “what” questions as well:
“There's a new [cuisine] or [dish] place.”
So, if something new opened, you can say:
“There's a new Italian place.”
Or, “There's a new burger place open. Why don't we try that?”
So, you can follow this statement with this, “Why don't we try that?” in this case.
Or you can use this as like the basic, as a basic suggestion phrase:
“Why don't we try something new?”
Or, “Why don't we try an Italian place?”
“Why don't we try a burger place?”
So, “why don't we try.” Because we're using “try” though here, it sounds like you haven't visited that place before.
You can also use this for a new recipe at home.
So, “Why don't we try a new recipe?”
Or “Why don't we try the recipe from that cookbook?”
You can also use this at home.
Same thing here. You can use these to talk not just about restaurants, but also about things you make in your home. These two as well, if you're talking about home cooking, you can use these to talk about or to express that you don't have a specific desire for a kind of food or a specific dish. These are specific for restaurants, visiting a restaurant or a bar or a cafe.
So, these are some quick, kind of patterns that you can use to respond to these very common and very basic questions about going to restaurants, eating food. So, I hope that this was helpful for you. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye!

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