#130 Eating Out
Steve: Jill. You were giggling there. What were you giggling about?
Jill: Just that we are always mention the weather on our podcast and it seems to be raining every time.
Steve: So we're going to stop talking about the weather. Um, yeah. Food, let's talk about food. You like to go to restaurants, I gather? What was your most recent experience of going to a restaurant?
Jill: A few days ago I went to a new restaurant with a friend of mine and quite a small place. It was fine, nice, nothing really fancy but on the pricier side. Like, my main dish was $22 and actually we found the service was fine but certainly not the service that I've received at some other upscale restaurants in the city where they're just very professional and just really on top of everything. There it was sort of like we stood in the doorway waiting for five minutes and there were two people near the front and they looked at us and never even said anything. And, just that sort of thing, not really impressive when you're paying that much money. Steve: You know, I'm a bit like you. Yeah, I like to go out although I get better food at home. But it's nice to go out because it's a change of atmosphere. There's other people there, it's nice, it's kind of a, it's a little bit … Jill: Experience.
Steve: Experience, whatever. But the service is very important. And, it's quite easy for a poor server to basically destroy your experience and make you not want to go back there. You might even go to a restaurant five times and have a good experience and if you meet inattentive or lazy or unpleasant or whatever server you won't go back again. So, the position of whatever the politically correct term is now, waiter, server, I don't know, dining room attendant, whatever we're supposed to call those people, that's an extremely important position. Jill: Yeah, and I think that that's why in many restaurants they go out of their way, they bend over backwards to do something for you if you are not happy with the quality of the food or something because they know you're going to remember that bad experience even if you've had ten good experiences so they want to turn that bad experience into something positive. Steve: Right. And, of course what makes a successful restaurant very often is just the feeling that it is authentic, that there is something real and different there. If you are a, as an example, if I'm going to have Japanese food I want a Japanese restaurant that's run by Japanese people. The majority of Japanese restaurants in Vancouver are run by Korean and Chinese people. If I want Chinese food I want a place run by Chinese. If I want Korean food I want a place run by Koreans. If I go for Japanese food I want a place run by Japanese people. It's authentic. We have a restaurant in our building here run by a French man and I find the food a little bit heavy and I don't particularly like it that much but he is very authentic. The atmosphere is very authentic and so he's been extremely successful even though, I hope he isn't listening to this but I, you know, it's not my favorite food but the atmosphere is authentic. Jill: Right and I mean, I happen to love the restaurant downstairs because I really like rich, saucy, creamy foods which is what a lot of French food is and I know it does leave you with a bit of a stomach ache sometimes, me too, but it sure tastes good and it's very authentic. You know he's got the French accent and it's a good experience. Steve: Yeah, so it's got to be real; its got to be authentic and I guess we were saying earlier that we both kind of like to go out and eat and we're not the kind of people who party until five in the morning so I guess that makes us boring by some standards. But, I don't understand like, one of the things that I do not understand and I have never been to one, is one of these concerts, a rock concert. I mean, I can understand going to a concert for two or three hours, sitting down, listening to music, especially classical music which is, although I still prefer listening at home to a CD. But anyway, you go there, you hear people cough, shuffle around, whatever. That's okay. But to go and sit in a stadium or to sit in some field all day long while people are pounding out this music which is not music anyway to me. It's just noise and just like hour after hour like, I don't understand. It's just, it just does not, it is some kind of an exotic thing that is done by some tribe that I have nothing to do with. I don't understand it. Jill: I think a lot of the day concerts or those sort of weekend type festivals, things that happen for over two or three days at a time where they have several different artists, music artists playing, it's all day and you can even camp out there, I personally have never been to one of those because it doesn't do a lot for me either. But, I have friends who go and will go to one every year, the same one maybe and they love it and they camp and I think it's a really, it's really just a big social experience. And, people drink a lot and lots of people are on some kind of drug and not everybody but a lot of people and so I guess it's appealing for them. But, I think for just the average person to go to a concert for two or three hours at night is plenty or more than enough.
Steve: Right. Okay so anyway we're pretty straight laced and boring. That's okay. Yeah, I think that's, what was that, on the subject of restaurants you know, a big part of going to a restaurant to me is wine. I love drinking wine. I drink wine at home and of course it's much more expensive to drink wine in a restaurant but it kind of makes the occasion. The other day I was having lunch in a small Chinese restaurant and it, was sitting at a large table where different people that you don't know kind of sit down so this lady sat beside me and she was Chinese. And so, she started talking, we started talking. In fact, she recognized me because I'm sometimes on the Chinese television, right, speaking Chinese and she said, oh you're Steve. I've heard you in Chinese. I said, yeah, that's me. Jill: You're a celebrity. Steve: I'm a celebrity within a very limited group of people. And, so then we chatted for a while. Then she's opening up a Thai restaurant and her husband was a Thai chef, did Thai cooking in China. So I think that's a little difficult to pull off unless he's very, very good. Now if he stays in the kitchen and they get Thai girls dressed in that Thai outfit or whatever, and I guess they can get Chinese girls. Nobody would know the difference as long as they wear the Thai outfit but you've got to create that authentic, that authentic feel and I told her that. I said, that, between that and having a clean bathroom which is not always the case in Chinese restaurants. Those things are important if you want to be successful in this area here.
The third thing I said to her, I said, you know, even though it's Thai food a lot of people enjoy wine with a meal. And since Thai food is eaten with a knife and fork I think if you paid some attention to what kinds of wines would be, would suit Thai food best, A. you're going to make more money selling wine than selling beer and I think it will make it more of a sort of a…. Jill: Experience.
Steve: More of an experience, more of a formal experience, more of a dining experience if you can have wine with it. I don't know what, I mean I don't eat Thai food. Do you and would you drink wine with it?
Jill: I don't eat Thai food often. I find it's mostly too spicy for me but I have eaten it. There's things I like. I just order it with less spice. But, actually I find that I, I don't like drinking wine with foods from different countries. When I go to a French restaurant which we have a lot of in Vancouver, French food, I love having wine with perhaps even Italian food, North American food, but if I go for Indian food or Japanese food, Thai food, I don't order wine. Steve: You know I'm quite different. I drink red wine with Sushi. And, in fact when I was in China the last time two or three years ago I was quite surprised to see at the local Chinese restaurants where the locals go, this was not a tourist place, the number of Chinese couples or, not for the large table where it's a big banquety type thing but it may be two couples that are going out for dinner in China like locals, the number of people who ordered red wine. And, there is red wine produced in China which is actually very good and I like red wine with Chinese food, with Sushi, with whatever, so if I go to that Thai restaurant I'm going to order red wine but that's just me. Alright, I think we've kind of covered that subject. Anything you want to add? Salt and pepper?
Jill: A little salt and pepper never hurts and yeah that's it. Steve: Okay then. Bye for now.
Jill: Bye.
Steve: Oh we forgot to say our plug. We always forget that because we have so much fun talking. This text, the best way to improve your English listening to it and of course is to listen several times. And to read the text at EnglishLingQ.com where you can import the transcript into your LingQ because by the time you're listening to this we'll be into LingQ, I hope. Then you can save words and phrases and improve your English so this is really a part of EnglishLingQ.com.
Jill: And, LingQ is l-i-n-g-q. com.
Steve: Right. So to go to the site itself it's www.lingq.com. Thank you.
Jill: Bye, bye.
