In the Western restaurant

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In the Western restaurant  

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  　E: Hi, Welcome to Let's Talk. Today! Wanna contempl ate with Rebecca what is a good meal.

　　R: And now let's look at our dialogue. You can see the people in the conversation ordering their food in a restaurant.

　　Dialogue:

　　W1: How's the NEW YORK STEAK cooked?

　　W2: Well it's USDA New York strip grilled to perfec tion, and served with red wine sauce, garden vegetables , and a choice of baked potatoes, steamed rice or spagh etti.

　　W1: Thank you. I'll have New York steak with the ba ked potato, and that will be perfect.

　　W2: And would you like your steak rare, medium-rare , or well done?

　　W1: Medium-rare would be perfect.

　　E: Now we know that in China, a good meal would be "si cai yi tang", four dishes and one soup, but in the West we have a very different way of thinking about wha t is a good dinner.

　　R: Yeah. A traditional dinner might include a piece of meat for each person at the table, and one or two ve getables, and a starch like "mi fan" rice or potatoes.

　　E: In the West, when people talk about what is a go od dinner, they often think about what kind of vitamins are they going to get, or minerals, how much protein wi ll they eat, how much carbohydrate will they eat.

　　R: And it depends on where you're living in the Wes t. Some countries are so concentrated on fish because t hey live near the ocean. Other countries in history, th ey used to say you should have fish at least once a wee k, because it was harder to get, but it's so good for y ou that it's part of nutrition that you don't want to f orget.

　　R: And of course meat is a big issue with man in th e West. One of the favorite types of meat in America is steak. And so you need to know what kind of steak and t here are names for steaks. And of course they all came from the same cow, but they cut differently the meat of the cow. And so when you're in a restaurant ordering a steak, you have to know which piece or cut of the cow, and how do you want it cooked.

　　E: And each cut will have a different amount of fat in the meat or a different bone in the meat. And so eac h cut has its own name, for example, you might have sir loin steak, that's a very good cut or you might have T- bone steak. What's a T-bone steak? It has a bone, shape like a "T". That's why it's called a T-bone steak. Ther e are many different names for steak, and I think that' s a big difference between Chinese and English, because in Chinese, you just say "ji rou" chicken or "niu rou" beef, but we have all these different kinds of cuts of beef and they all have a different name.

　　R: And I do think it's important to know how to ord er, if you like it to be pretty red, you need to known rare, medium, or well done.

　　E: In Chinese, you say "ba fen shu" or "wu fen shu" , but in English we say rare, medium rare, and you can say medium and well done, you can make all sorts of com binations…

　　R: You know I have a friend who is Chinese, and he just went on a trip to Spain and he was so surprised th at he could order a big rice dish with vegetables and f ish in it. And he said this is like China. So actually in the West, the vegetable, the meat or fish, and starc h, rice or potato is very important for every meal, but in every country in every meal, they are not the same.

　　E: I think if you go to America, or to Europe, and you start to make dinner, what you'll find is that it t akes a lot of time. Because no one is busy cutting up t he meat ahead of time, you just get a big piece of meat and cut it yourself. This is a big difference. We want you to look at the dialogue now, we have a dialogue fro m a restaurant and you can see how they order their foo d and you can see what the waitress says.