Virtuous English AcademyFood & Restaurants — A2 English Vocabulary
This A2 vocabulary list gathers 30 elementary English words about food & restaurants — eating out, ordering and cooking at home. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
- #A2
- #DailyLife
- #Flashcards
- #Definitions
- #Examples
- #Pronunciation
Using food & restaurants words in English
This list moves you from naming food to actually eating out, and restaurant English is unusually fixed. The order of courses has set names, the request forms are formulaic, and one word — bill — is the single most useful British-American difference on the page. The grammar trap here is different from the A1 food list: it is not countability but the verbs. Taste, order and have all behave in ways that surprise learners.
What to watch out for
The courses have fixed names
A British meal out runs starter, then main course, then dessert. Americans say appetiser and entrée instead, and entrée confusingly means the main course, not the first one. Dish is one item on the menu; meal is the whole occasion; food is the uncountable substance. So the food was good, the pasta dish was excellent and we had a lovely meal are three different statements.
Taste takes an adjective, not an adverb
Say it tastes good, never it tastes well. The same applies to look, smell, sound and feel: these verbs describe the thing, not the action, so an adjective follows. Delicious is a step further — it already means extremely tasty, so very delicious sounds odd to English ears. Use absolutely delicious if you want to make it stronger.
Asking for things: Could I have…?
The safe frames in a restaurant are Could I have…, I would like… and Could we get the bill, please? The verb order is what you do, but you rarely say it to the waiter — you say it about the meal afterwards: I ordered the fish. And bill is the British word for what you pay at the end; in America it is the check, while a British cheque is something else entirely.
Words learners mix up
Three tables: the words for how something tastes, the adjectives that describe you rather than the food, and a pair of nouns one letter apart that produce genuinely comic sentences when they are swapped.
Describing what is on the plate
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| taste | Both the noun and the verb for what your tongue reports. As a verb it links straight to an adjective. | This soup tastes too salty. |
| flavour | The particular taste something has, and the word for one variety of it. Countable: three flavours of ice cream. | It has a strong lemon flavour. |
| spicy | Made with spices, and usually hot in the mouth. It does not mean lively or rude, as its cousins do in several languages. | The curry was too spicy for me. |
| bitter | Sharp and slightly unpleasant, like black coffee or dark chocolate — not the same as sour, which is the taste of lemon. | Black coffee is very bitter. |
British English keeps the u in flavour. Watch hot in a restaurant, because it covers both temperature and chilli, so Do you like hot food? may need a follow-up question before you answer. And sweet is the opposite of bitter in one pairing and of savoury in another, depending on whether you are talking about taste or about courses.
Things you are, not things you have
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| hungry | An adjective, so it needs be: I am hungry. I have hunger is a word-for-word translation and is not English. | I am hungry — shall we eat? |
| thirsty | The same shape, for wanting a drink. Be thirsty, never have thirst. | The children are thirsty. |
| fresh | Recently made, picked or caught. Its opposite is stale or frozen, not cold. | The bread is fresh from the bakery. |
| delicious | Extremely good to eat. Already strong, so it stands on its own instead of being built up. | That was absolutely delicious. |
This be pattern runs through a whole family of everyday statements: be hungry, be thirsty, be cold, be right, be twenty years old. Most European languages choose have for at least some of them, which is why I have hungry and I have twenty years turn up in the first week of every class and are worth fixing on day one.
A recipe is not a receipt
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| recipe | The instructions for cooking a dish. Three syllables, and the final e is pronounced: RESS-i-pee. | She sent me the recipe for the cake. |
| ingredient | One of the things a recipe asks for. Countable, and the stress falls on the second syllable. | The ingredients are printed on the packet. |
| vegetarian | A person who eats no meat or fish, and the adjective for food that suits them. | Do you have a vegetarian option? |
| vegetable | The food itself. Three syllables in ordinary British speech, not four: VEJ-tuh-bl. | The dish comes with rice and vegetables. |
A receipt — the paper a shop gives you, with a silent p — is a completely different word, and swapping the two produces sentences about cooking a piece of till paper. Note too that vegetarian and vegetable share a root without being interchangeable: a vegetarian dish may well contain cheese and eggs, so it is not simply a plate of vegetables.
Collocations that sound natural
Restaurant English is short and repetitive, which makes it quick to learn and unforgiving when a word is changed. These are the exact blocks a waiter says and expects to hear back.
order
Are you ready to order?order a starterorder the same againa takeaway order
The waiter asks the question; you answer with the food rather than with the verb. I will have the chicken, please is the normal reply, and I want sounds abrupt.
bill
ask for the billsplit the billput it on the billthe bill comes to
Split the bill means divide it equally between everybody; pay separately means each person pays for what they actually had. British restaurants are used to both requests.
meal
a three-course meala light mealcook a mealEnjoy your meal!
English has no everyday equivalent of bon appétit. Waiters say Enjoy your meal; friends around a table usually say nothing at all.
snack
have a snacka quick snacka healthy snacksnack food
The noun and the verb are the same word, but have a snack is far commoner in speech than the verb on its own.
portion
a large portiona generous portiona children’s portionportion size
fresh
fresh breadfreshly madefresh fruit and vegetablesfresh out of the oven
The adverb freshly only works in front of a past participle — freshly baked, freshly ground — and cannot stand alone.
Where each word belongs
Two of these are job words that learners hand out too generously, two carry a second meaning you will meet away from the table, and two are British habits rather than rules.
- chefJob titleA chef is trained and cooks professionally; anyone who makes dinner is a cook. Calling a friend a chef because they made pasta credits them with a career they do not have, and I am a good chef about your own kitchen sounds strange.
- tipBritish customAround ten per cent is usual in a British restaurant, and many bills already carry a service charge, in which case you add nothing. The verb works too: we tipped the waiter. The unrelated everyday sense — a useful tip — means a piece of advice.
- courseTwo meaningsOne part of a meal — the main course — and also a series of lessons: an English course. Both are countable and context separates them at once. The fixed phrase of course belongs to neither.
- bakeryShop namesThe shop is a bakery and the person is a baker, but older British usage sends you to the baker’s — apostrophe, and no shop word after it. The same pattern gives the butcher’s and the chemist’s.
- serveTwo sensesA waiter serves customers, and a recipe serves four, meaning it makes enough for four people. On a menu, served with tells you what arrives alongside: served with new potatoes.
- fryEveryday · cookingCooking in hot oil in a pan. The past is fried, and in front of a noun it is an ordinary adjective: a fried egg. Boil behaves the same way in water, and boiling has a second life meaning extremely hot: it is boiling in here.
Sentences to try
Four frames covering a whole meal out. Swap in food you actually like and run through them in order.
- Could I see the menu, please?
- I would like the soup as a starter.
- This meal is absolutely delicious.
- Could we have the bill, please?
Questions about food & restaurants vocabulary
Is it "the bill" or "the check" in a restaurant?
In Britain, Ireland, Australia and most of the Commonwealth it is the bill: Could we have the bill, please? In the United States it is the check. Both are understood almost everywhere, so neither will cause confusion, but bill is the form to use if you are learning British English. Be careful not to write cheque, which in British spelling means a written payment from a bank account and is a completely different thing.
Do I say "it tastes good" or "it tastes well"?
It tastes good. Verbs of the senses — taste, look, smell, sound, feel — link a subject to a description, so they take an adjective rather than an adverb. It tastes well would mean the food is skilled at tasting things. The same rule gives you you look tired, that sounds great and the bread smells fresh. The one exception worth knowing is feel with health: both I feel bad and I feel badly exist, but only the first means unwell.
What is the difference between a meal, a dish and food?
Food is the uncountable substance you eat: Italian food, the food was cold. A dish is one prepared item, the kind of thing that has its own line on a menu: a rice dish, my favourite dish. A meal is the whole eating occasion — breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a full evening in a restaurant: a three-course meal. So a meal is made of dishes, and dishes are made of food.