Restaurant reviews vocabulary and speaking

Restaurant reviews vocabulary and speaking

Warmer – reviews discussion questions

How do you choose new movies, books, TV programmes, restaurants, hotels, etc to try?

How often do you read reviews? Who are those reviews usually written by?

How useful are reviews? What are the differences between good reviews and bad reviews?

Have you ever read restaurant reviews? How useful are they, do you think?

What would you want a restaurant review to tell you? What are the most important things?

 

Reviews vocabulary

Choose the most important things to include in a restaurant review from the list on the next page or add your own ideas. 

Choose the least important things from the list or add your own ideas.

Read two restaurant reviews and decide which is best.

What are the good points and bad points of each review?

Brainstorm adjectives into the table below, then find more in the texts:

Positive adjectives	Negative adjectives	Neutral adjectives/ Either meaning possible

Try to agree on descriptions of restaurants that you both know. If you run out of restaurants to discuss, try takeout food, department store food halls, etc.

Find restaurants that your partner has never tried, describe them, then see if your partner thinks they would like to try them or not.

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Important and unimportant things in restaurant reviews

• appearance of the staff (uniforms, attractiveness, etc)
• atmosphere
• awards (Michelin stars, etc)
• best dishes
• business (financial backers, profitability, cost of setting up the restaurant, etc)
• busyness
• changes over time
• claims in its marketing (on its website, etc)
• comparisons with other restaurants
• connection to trends in society (immigration, etc)
• customising orders
• décor
• drinks
• ecological issues (organic produce, locally-sourced produce, etc)
• ethical issues (staff pay, animal cruelty, etc)
• history
• how easy it is to book
• how filling/ healthy/ nutritious/ fattening/ original the food is
• how the writer first heard about the restaurant/ why the writer chose the restaurant
• how traditional/ authentic or original the food is
• hygiene/ cleanliness
• location/ access (transport connections, etc)
• media coverage
• music
• name and background of the head chef
• noise
• opening hours
• origins of the recipes/ dishes
• other people’s reviews
• outside seating (terrace tables, etc)
• parking
• philosophy/ concept
• popularity/ trendiness
• prices
• service (quickness, accuracy, advice,
• spiciness
• star rating
• suitability for particular people (children, people on a diet, people with dietary restrictions such as allergies, people in wheelchairs, large groups, etc)
• take out and/ or delivery services
• the other customers (famous people, trendy people, families, etc)
• tipping
• toilets
• waiting times