Seafood Dinner

Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod.

My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and we're here talking about some special foods today.

That's right.

Today we're going to talk about seafood.

So everything that comes from the sea that we eat.

That's right.

So we're in a restaurant and we're going to hear about the different options this restaurant

offers.

Let's take a listen to the dialogue.

This is such a nice restaurant.

I feel so classy.

Yeah, it's a little bit pricey, but they serve the best seafood in town.

May I take your order?

Yes, I would like some marinated grilled shrimp for starters and I'll also have the lobster.

Excellent choice, sir.

And for you, madam?

I would like the baked oysters and the seafood platter.

Very good, madam.

That seafood platter sounds good.

Excuse me, what does the platter have?

It's a great combination of clams, scallops, mussels, calamari and filet of salmon and

tuna.

It comes with a side of butter sauce and French fries.

That sounds great.

Cancel the lobster and give me one of the same, please.

Very well, sir.

Anything to drink?

Can we get a bottle of your house white wine, please?

Superb choice.

I will be back shortly with the wine.

All right, we're back.

So today we're going to take a look at a lot of vocab, so we're going to have two parts

of language takeaway and let's start with the first one.

Language takeaway.

Now, in language takeaway part one today, we have a number of really important and useful

adjectives.

The first one is classy.

That's right.

So we're going to a nice restaurant and so you feel like you're in a classy place.

Now, a classy place is a nice place.

You might be expected to dress nicely.

It might be a little bit fancy.

Exactly.

So, classy is kind of a synonym of fancy or luxurious.

Right.

So if you're going on a date with someone, it might be a good idea to go to a classy

restaurant.

That's right.

But usually if a restaurant is classy, it also means that it's a little bit pricey.

Okay.

So something that is pricey is expensive and seafood is famous in America for being very

pricey.

That's right.

So pricey means that it's a little bit expensive.

Now going to the food that we're going to get today, we had a couple of different ways

of describing how the food was prepared.

So for example, the first one is marinated grilled shrimp.

All right.

Now, something that is marinated is covered in a sauce or a liquid before it's cooked.

All right.

So you can have maybe a regular steak, but you can also have a marinated steak, which

would be marinated in some kind of flavor like garlic or yogurt.

That's right.

So usually you leave it in maybe some sauce like garlic sauce for a couple of hours or

a couple of minutes before you cook it.

Now when we cook it, there are different ways of cooking things.

In this case, we're having grilled shrimp.

All right.

Now grilled is different from fried.

Fried we do in a pan with some oil, but a grill, usually there's no pan, no oil.

There's just a grill.

So grill, grilled.

Grill is the tool that we use.

Grilled food tends to be quite healthy.

There's very little oil.

It's a bit more dry.

And oftentimes we do grilling outside because there's lots of smoke.

That's right.

Because usually you have like maybe a barbecue and you have some charcoal in there or some

wood and that's what you use to cook the food with.

Yeah.

And grilled food is very easy to notice because there are usually black lines on top and bottom.

That's from the grill.

That's right.

So we've eliminated grilled shrimp for starters.

So what is a starter?

Well think about the word starter.

Start.

Now a starter is something you eat at the start of your meal, at the beginning.

You eat it before you eat the main course.

All right.

So it's also known as an appetizer.

That's right.

Starters and appetizers are the same thing.

And these are small things you eat before you start to eat your main meal.

So they're not very filling.

Okay.

So yeah, it'll be something small like a soup or maybe like in this case some marinated

grilled shrimp.

Yes.

All right.

So great vocab there.

Why don't we review that part and we'll be back in a bit.

This is such a nice restaurant.

I feel so classy.

Yeah.

It's a little bit pricey but they serve the best seafood in town.

May I take your order?

Yes.

I would like some marinated grilled shrimp for starters and I'll also have the lobster.

Excellent choice, sir.

And for you, madam?

I would like the baked oysters and the seafood platter.

Very good, madam.

That seafood platter sounds good.

Excuse me, what does the platter have?

It's a great combination of clams, scallops, mussels, calamari and filet of salmon and

tuna.

It comes with a side of butter sauce and French fries.

That sounds great.

Cancel the lobster and give me one of the same, please.

Very well, sir.

Anything to drink?

Can we get a bottle of your house white wine, please?

Superb choice.

I will be back shortly with the wine.

All right.

So now let's take a look at all the exquisite types of seafood that we have here on Language

Takeaway Part 2.

All right.

Now the first thing we have in Language Takeaway Part 2 is a very distinctive animal from the

ocean.

It's bright red and it has two claws.

Right.

We're talking about a lobster.

Now lobsters, you don't find everywhere.

In fact, there are some parts of America where they're very famous for their lobster like

Maine.

Now these are animals that are hard on the outside and soft and white on the inside and

they're quite difficult to eat.

That's right.

So they look kind of like crabs because they also have the claws and everything but they're

a lot longer, right?

That's right.

They're round and a lobster is long and lobsters are also famous for one part, for their tails.

Right.

The tails are full of meat.

They're very delicate, very delicious.

Okay.

So we're having some lobster and we also ordered some baked oysters.

Now oysters are another kind of thing that comes from the ocean.

They come in a shell, all right?

And you might hear about oysters because some people, some restaurants like to have an oyster

bar where they serve raw oysters over ice.

That's right.

So they look like big rocks basically and when you open them inside, you have meat.

And actually I think you get pearls from oysters, right?

That's right.

So these two are special.

They have a nice relationship.

The pearl forms inside, it grows inside of the oyster.

Very good.

So now we've taken a look at some oysters and talking about these things that have shells,

we also have clams.

Now while oysters are big and sometimes quite shiny, clams are smaller, usually white or

gray and they have lines on them and they're shells that you open up and you eat the meat

from inside.

Right.

So I guess if you've ever been on the beach and you're collecting little seashells, usually

those are kind of like clams.

That's right.

They're quite small.

They can be about the size of an American quarter, 25 cents.

Okay.

So now in this seafood platter that we're ordering, we have clams, we have scallops.

Ooh, scallops are one of my favorite kinds of seafood.

They're quite soft and chewy and they're usually white.

Okay.

And then we have some mussels also.

Now mussels are much different looking.

They're also in shells, but they're long and the shells are black.

That's right.

So clams are kind of small and round.

The oysters are pretty big and look like rocks.

Mussels on the other hand are long and black and when you open them inside, they're shiny

also.

They're orange on the inside or yellow and so they're quite interesting looking, but

they're also very famous for the French or Belgian rather, the Belgian dish, Moules Frites,

which is a nice specialty.

All right.

And lastly, we are also having some calamari in this seafood platter.

Oh, this is another one of my favorites.

Now calamari is a kind of food, but the animal is the squid.

Okay.

So why is it called calamari?

Well calamari, I believe, comes from the Italian word calamaro.

Calamari means that it's squid that's been cooked so that people can eat it.

Okay.

So basically calamari and squid are the same thing.

They are the same animal, but calamari means that it's prepared to eat.

Yes.

And usually it's fried.

So when squid is fried, it becomes hard, chewy.

And that's what calamari tastes like.

It's quite chewy.

All right.

Great stuff.

Let's review everything one last time with this exquisite lesson.

This is such a nice restaurant.

I feel so classy.

Yeah, it's a little bit pricey, but they serve the best seafood in town.

May I take your order?

Yes.

I would like some marinated grilled shrimp for starters and I'll also have the lobster.

Excellent choice, sir.

And for you, madam?

I would like the baked oysters and the seafood platter.

Very good, madam.

That seafood platter sounds good.

Excuse me, what does the platter have?

It's a great combination of clams, scallops, mussels, calamari, and filet of salmon and

tuna.

It comes with a side of butter sauce and French fries.

That sounds great.

Cancel the lobster and give me one of the same, please.

Very well, sir.

Anything to drink?

Can we get a bottle of your house white wine, please?

Superb choice.

I will be back shortly with the wine.

All right, so seafood, we said, usually has the connotation of being a little bit pricey.

Why do you think that is?

I think it's pricey because the best seafood doesn't come from seafood farms.

It comes from people who go in boats and they collect the seafood in nets.

And also, there are fewer and fewer places now in America where you can find this kind

of food because some places have experienced overfishing.

Too many people are trying to fish.

And also, some places just don't have the right climate for certain animals.

Right.

So, for example, in the United States, you do have, well, the whole country is covered

in the West Coast by the Pacific Ocean.

The East Coast, you have the Atlantic.

So obviously, you do have some coasts.

But if you're in the middle of the United States, it's probably hard to get seafood.

So, I imagine it's very expensive.

It can be very, very expensive.

So oftentimes, we get lake food.

It's different kind of fish, but we don't have lobsters.

But you'll find that in the West, you get very good salmon because Alaska in the Northwest

is very famous for salmon from the Pacific.

And in the East, it's very famous for lobster and crab, which are delicious.

Now, even though you have, it's famous for lobster and crab, it's still relatively expensive

compared to other dishes.

Like for example, I think a lobster, how much would a lobster dinner cost?

A lobster dinner could cost you $150.

Right.

And you're getting almost the same amount of meat as maybe having a steak that would

be $20.

Yeah, less meat.

But we have more cows than we have lobsters.

And also, lobsters are famous for being pretty expensive.

It's a very fancy meal to have lobsters.

Exactly.

So, it's very interesting.

Some countries, for example, so it's very interesting, but some countries, seafood is

very, very inexpensive.

Some communities or some countries or communities that fish or have, for example, shrimp farms,

it's very inexpensive.

So, it's such a treat to be able to go there and have seafood all you want and not have

to spend $300 on a meal.

It is indeed.

And it's really nice to be able to get these big prawns, these big shrimp or lobsters

and eat them without worrying about the price.

But I'm curious, in your country, do you have seafood?

And if so, what kind?

Is it cheap?

Is it expensive?

Is it pricey?

Let us know.

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