Activitiy for upper-intermediate or advanced students of English
about restaurants in Madrid. As a secondary objective, I’ll be
including as many of these linkers
in the individual texts as possible as students need them for
exams like the FCE and EOI. (This may make the texts sound a bit
overloaded as a whole.)
As a secondary
objective, I’ll be including as many of these linkers
in the individual texts as possible as students need them for
exams like the FCE and EOI. (This may make the texts sound a
bit overloaded as a whole.)
Links highlighted in orange link to the linkers page.
Links highlighted in bold dark
red lead to external pages.
Normal blue links lead to vocabulary word definitions below.
I eat out every
now and then and I know I’m
taking my chances each time. I don’t get gastroenteritis
very often nowadays because I eat out less frequently than
I used to, but when I do, it’s usually after having dined
out somewhere. In
fact, it’s a wonder
I go to restaurants at all
after that and after hearing
the many horror stories that I’ve heard from Spaniards.
That is, the waiters amongst
them have told me of filthy kitchens
and widespread abuse of monosodium
glutamate (MSG), which is used as a food additive to
enhance the flavor of foods, but which in this case is
often used to cover up the bad taste of spoiled meat. (Glutamate
on Wikipedia) Others tell me about how
they had to spend 3 or 4 days in the hospital with a bad case
of food poisoning, which usually
had something to do with salmonella or feces (i.e. poor
hand-washing practices amongst the food-handlers).
The truth be told, I’ve often
been handed a previously used dish in a restaurant or a nasty
poorly washed tray in a fast-food place. Having warned you
about all that, I should mention that I sometimes do get good
recommendations for cleanliness from past and present employees
of these restaurants such as: McDonald’s and the Hard Rock
Café.
Admittedly, I usually won’t
spend over 10 euros for a meal, which might be a factor to
consider if you're hoping to find a restaurant which doesn’t
employ poorly trained and unmotivated personnel and/or low
quality raw materials such as the cheapest oils and soon-to-expire
fish and meat.
All in all, however, my feeling
is that you’re far safer spending your money in supermarkets
on the basic foods and cooking them up yourself. (290 words)
Vocabulary
taking my chances
- I'm running the risks it's a wonder - It's unbelievable, but true at all - in any way
whatsoever filthy - extremely dirty widespread - extensive,
all over the place enhance - improve, make better
had something to do with - was in some way connected to
