Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 818, Placing a Drink Order.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 818.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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On this episode we're going to listen to a conversation between Joel and someone who works at a restaurant.
Let's get started.
Hello, I'm Allie and I'll be your server today.
Here's a menu.
Can I take your drink order?
I'd like a glass of water with no ice.
Sure.
Will that be sparkling or still?
Uh, tap.
Okay, one glass of tap water.
Would you like anything else?
We have soda, iced tea, lemonade.
I'd like a Diet Coke.
Sure.
I'll be right back with your drinks in just one moment.
Can you bring me a wine list?
No problem.
Here is your water and Diet Coke, and this is our wine list.
Are you looking for any wine in particular?
We have an extensive selection and some very fine house wines.
I'm looking for the kind I drink at home.
What label is the wine you drink at home?
I don't remember the name, but it has a very distinctive packaging.
Oh, can you describe it?
Sure.
It's a large white box.
You mean it's a boxed wine?
Yes, that's right.
I'm sorry.
We don't have any boxed wines.
And you call yourself a restaurant?
Joel is sitting in a restaurant and a woman comes up to him.
She's the waitress.
We would also more generally call this the server.
The server, S-E-R-V-E-R, is the person who serves you your food.
Usually also the person who asks you what you want.
We would use the expression server, takes your order, asks you what you want to eat and drink and then gets those things for you.
That's a server or a waitress if it's a woman, a waiter, W-A-I-T-E-R, if it's a man.
So the waitress or server says, hello, I'm Allie.
That's her name.
And I'll be your server today.
This has kind of become a common way that waiters and waitresses communicate.
Approach someone who comes to the restaurant and sits down.
When they first walk up to you, they may give you their name.
Now, personally, I don't usually remember their name, so giving me their name doesn't help me much.
But that's what some restaurants, a lot of restaurants do now.
The server will give her name or his name and tell you something obvious, like they'll be your server today.
The server says, Ali, says, see, I remembered her name, says, here's a menu.
Can I take your drink order?
Your drink order would be what you want to drink.
Joel says, I'd like a glass of water with no ice.
I'd like is the same as I'll have, which is the same as I want.
Here's what I want to order.
Here's what I want you to bring me.
I'd like a glass of water with no ice.
The Will that be sparkling or still?
When you go to a nicer restaurant, you can get your water sparkling, which means the technical word here would be carbonated.
It has bubbles in it.
Still would be non-carbonated, without bubbles, but still perhaps from a bottle.
Joel, however, says he wants tap, T-A-P.
Tap water is water that you just get from the sink.
So there are three kinds of water you could get.
Tap water would be just regular water from a sink or a faucet in a sink, technically.
That's the thing that the water comes out of.
Bottled water can be either still water or sparkling water.
Sparkling water has the bubbles in it, if you will.
The server says, okay, one glass of tap water.
Would you like anything else?
We have soda, iced tea, lemonade.
She starts listing all of the kinds of drinks that they have at this restaurant.
Soda, S-O-D-A, sometimes called soda pop, or in Minnesota, where I'm from, we say simply pop.
It's a sweet, carbonated, with bubbles, beverage or drink.
Coca-Cola, 7-Up, Pepsi, those are all examples of soda.
Iced tea is tea that is made the normal way with hot water, but then you put it into ice and it becomes iced tea.
Iced tea is very popular in the summertime.
Lemonade. is a drink made by mixing the juice of a lemon, a fruit, with water and sugar.
Lemonade is also very popular in the summertime in the.
That is diet.
Usually you're ordering it without all of the sugar.
It has what we would say fewer calories.
It's not as bad for you.
It won't make you as fat.
That's really the idea.
So a lot of people like me who don't want all the extra sugar will order a soda in its diet version.
So Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi.
Sometimes different soda companies have different names for this.
There's a type of soda in the U.S. called Coke Zero.
Well, that's really another kind of Diet Coke, but there's also a separate kind of Coke called Diet Coke.
It's very confusing.
The server says sure, I'll be right back, meaning I'll return quickly with your drinks, in just one moment, in just a minute.
Joel says, can you bring me a wine list today?
The wine list, as it sounds, is a menu of the kinds of wine that you can purchase or buy at a restaurant or at a bar.
Again, a nicer restaurant will typically have a wine list that you can order from.
I don't go to very many nice restaurants, so I don't have a lot of experience with the wine list.
When I do get a wine list, I don't usually open it because I don't drink wine typically for dinner.
I have sometimes.
The server says to Joel's request for the wine list.
She says, no problem, which is sort of an informal way of saying, oh, sure, of course.
Then she says, here is your water and Diet Coke.
So she goes away back to the kitchen and she gets some water, tap water, and a glass of Diet Coke.
And she says, this is our wine list.
Are you looking for any wine in particular?
That is, is there a specific kind of wine that you like?
She says, we have an extensive selection and some very fine house wines.
An extensive selection would be a lot of different kinds of wine.
Extensive means large or many of or something that is very complete.
So this restaurant has an extensive selection, meaning an extensive number of different wines that you can order.
And she says, Allie, right?
Allie says, some very fine house wines.
A house wine. is not a wine that comes from your house.
It's a wine that the restaurant sells usually by the glass.
You can buy a bottle of wine in a restaurant or you can just buy in many restaurants a glass of wine.
Usually the house wine is not the most expensive one.
It's usually not a famous brand, a famous kind of wine.
But if it's a good restaurant, usually a good wine, not the best wine they have, however.
Joel says, I'm looking for the kind I drink at home.
So here Joel is saying that he wants the kind of wine that he also drinks at his house.
So in some ways this is kind of a house wine, but that's not the normal definition of house wine.
In fact, the word house has a couple of different meanings.
Take a look at our learning guide for some more of those.
Joel says he's looking for the kind of wine that he drinks at home.
So Allie asks him, what label is the wine you drink at home?
The label L-A-B-E-L is literally the piece of paper or sticker on the outside of the wine bottle that tells you what kind of wine it is and what company made the wine.
When we use it.
In this case, when someone says what label is the wine, they mean what kind of wine, what company made the wine that you're interested in?
Joel says, I don't remember the name, but it has a very distinctive packaging.
Distinctive means it's very easy to recognize.
It is something that as soon as you see it, you know exactly what it is.
Packaging is the way that you sell a certain physical product.
So when you buy cereal, it comes in a box.
The box is its packaging.
It's the thing that you put it in, the container, typically.
Joel says that the wine he drinks at home has a very distinctive packaging.
The server says, oh, can you describe it?
Joel says, sure.
It's a large white box.
The server says, you mean it's a boxed wine?
A boxed wine is a very cheap wine you can buy.
Usually it is sold in a box.
It's the cheapest, least expensive, and lowest quality kind of wine you could possibly buy.
Not a very good wine.
Joel says, yes, that's right, it's a boxed wine.
The server says, I'm sorry, we don't have any boxed wines.
If you go to a restaurant and they have boxed wines, it's probably not a very good restaurant.
And this is a good restaurant, so they don't have any boxed wines.
Joel is not happy.
He says, and you call yourself a restaurant?
This expression, usually in the form of a question and you call yourself something, is a phrase we use in a rude sort of way, or it could just be in a joking way to question how someone has described himself.
For example, I come from Minnesota where it's cold in the winter.
So when I go, say, to a warm place like here in California, people expect me to be used to the cold.
So if it gets a little cold out and I say, oh, it's terrible here.
It's freezing.
It's really cold.
And I start complaining.
My family or other people who know I'm from Minnesota might say and you call yourself a Minnesotan.
Meaning you're not really a Minnesotan.
You're not really from Minnesota if you think that, say, 50 degrees Fahrenheit is cold.
So Joel is saying here that this isn't a real restaurant if they don't have boxed wine.
Of course, Joel is a little crazy, so that's the reason for that.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Hello, I'm Allie, and I'll be your server today.
Here's a menu.
Can I take your drink order?
I'd like a glass of water with no ice.
Sure.
Would that be sparkling or still?
Tap.
Okay.
One glass of tap water.
Would you like anything else?
We have soda, iced tea, lemonade.
I'd like a Diet Coke.
Sure.
I'll be right back with your drinks in just one moment.
Can you bring me a wine list?
No problem.
Here is your water and Diet Coke, and this is our wine list.
Are you looking for any wine in particular?
We have an extensive selection and some very fine house wines.
I'm looking for the kind I drink at home.
What label is the wine you drink at home?
I don't remember the name, but it has a very distinctive packaging.
Oh, can you describe it?
Sure, it's a large white box...
You mean it's a boxed wine?
Yes, that's right.
I'm sorry.
We don't have any boxed wines.
And you call yourself a restaurant?
We have an extensive selection of wonderful dialogues written by our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
