Warming up.

Do you like to eat out?

Where do you like to go?

Are there any restaurants you can recommend in your hometown?

What kinds of meals do you like?

And what is your favourite cuisine?

Why do you think people go to restaurants when they want to celebrate something?

Which are more popular in your country: fast food restaurants or traditional restaurants?

Some people say that food in an expensive restaurant is always better than food in a cheap restaurant – would you agree?

Do you think there will be a greater choice of food available in shops in the future, or will there be less choice?

What effects has modern technology had on the way food is produced?

How important is it for a country to be able to grow all the food it needs, without importing any from other countries?

     Read the following text. What are the rules of behavior in the restaurant/café in your country?

Make sure you understand the meaning of the following words and word-combinations:

a key ingredient to

memorable

to offer comforting consistency

to explore local cuisine

the sites dedicated to food

overwhelming

to comment on

to encourage

a repeat guest

the scoop on the best places

first-hand knowledge

to look up menus

to track down

to take a mental inventory

the noise and bustle

clattering of plates

the whir of a coffee machine

to improve performance on creative tasks

to compete with

phenomena

unconscious

to seek out an establishment filled with other people

the clientele

 Restaurant. Café.

Part A. How to choose a good restaurant.

Whether you're hitting the road for an impromptu getaway, a business trip or the long-planned vacation of a lifetime, you'll probably agree that food is a key ingredient to making your trip a memorable one. Although national chains do offer comforting consistency in their menus, many people prefer exploring local cuisine for a true immersion into their temporary home -- however, many of the best spots aren't advertised and can be difficult to locate.

So how do you ensure that you have the right information to challenge your taste buds? How can you know where the locals go when their stomachs start rumbling?

As soon as you know what city you are visiting, start researching restaurants. The most obvious place to turn to is the Internet, but with millions of reviews and Web sites dedicated to food, it can get a little overwhelming. Head to the library or a local bookstore instead and check out the travel section there. Travel guides like Fodor's and Lonely Planet offer a good overview of must-try locales, but they do tend to highlight popular tourist spots over local flavor. In addition to large travel books, many cities publish their own "best of" guides that will tell you which restaurants are considered the crème de la crème in their town. Search online to see if your destination offers a guide or if the local paper has a restaurant section.

Millions of people use social networking, like Facebook or Twitter, on a regular basis to keep up with family and friends, so use it to your advantage and ask anyone who's visited your destination before to comment on their favorite spots. Once you've exhausted your Friends lists, check out what other people are saying about regional eats on Twitter by running a Twitter search for the cities you're curious about. Many locally owned eateries opt to post special deals and coupons to encourage repeat guests on social networks now, instead of on a Web site. Run a Google or other web search to see if the place you're interested in is on Facebook or Twitter, and be sure to follow or "like" them to get the same deals as the locals do.

Even with the most thorough research, some restaurants could still disappoint. If you really want the scoop on the best places to nosh in any given spot, turn to the locals. Check out Web sites dedicated specifically to regional food, like Urban Spoon, where you can request local recommendations in the forums and read reviews posted by folks with first-hand knowledge. Or, when you arrive at your destination, let the front desk clerk or concierge at your hotel know what type of cuisine you're most interested in sampling and get his or her advice. And don't be afraid to ask locals on the street, too. Most people will be happy to share the scoop on their city's best cuisine and where to find it.

With the popularity of cellular technology and smart phones, you're likely to have the Internet right at your fingertips. Using your phone, you can locate places to eat, read reviews and look up menus and more with dozens of apps created specially to make finding a good meal easy. Apps like Local Eats and Yelp allow you to read reviews and locate just about any restaurant on the map. Meanwhile, apps like Eat St. and Food Truck Fiesta take advantage of the food truck craze by using GPS technology to keep track of mobile food units, allowing you to easily track down the best in local street fare.

If you're traveling unexpectedly, you might not have time to plan your dining itinerary. So, how can you be sure the random restaurant you select will hit the spot? One of the best indications is a full parking lot. If others are piling in to eat, chances are the food is good. Take a mental inventory of your surroundings, too. Is the entrance well maintained? When you walk in, does it smell good and are you greeted right away? If you answer yes to these questions, chances are the owners take pride in their establishment, from the front door to the kitchen floors.

Part 2. Why do people work from the café?

You may find you work better in a coffee shop than in your bedroom, but perhaps not for the reasons you’ve been led to believe. Instead of the noise and bustle stimulating your imagination, your productivity could be because concentration is contagious.

For those who work from home, a cafe is a more inviting option than a day at the library. The idea that working in busy, noisy places like coffee shops enhances creativity and concentration has had a great deal of press over recent years. Research has shown that a moderate level of ambient noise, such as the clattering of plates and the whir of a coffee machine, improves performance on creative tasks.

There’s even a website that can help you replicate the sounds of a cafe at home. Coffitivity, which plays ambient sounds recorded in coffee shops, claims “to boost your creativity and help you work better”. It was inspired after its creators realised they worked more effectively when in a busy, noisy environment. “We had been in and out of coffee shops, and we were getting really good work done,” the site’s creators told the New York Times.

But could it be that the reason people work so effectively in busy places has more to do with the people around them than the sounds they are hearing?

We’ve known about the audience effect – that having a small audience improves performance – for close to 100 years. Similarly, it’s also well established that we perform better when we have someone to compete with. A study showing that cyclists go faster when there is a speedy pacemaker was published back in 1898.

But neither of these phenomena explains why being in a coffee shop filled with people reading, chatting and relaxing would make us work harder. Perhaps it doesn’t?

It might be that it’s the other people working hard at their laptops in a coffee shop that are responsible for your improved performance. A recent study suggests that mental effort is contagious – simply being around people who are working hard is enough to make us work harder ourselves.

This discovery was made by sitting people who were doing different tasks next to each other. When one person’s task was more difficult, the person next to them worked harder too, even though they couldn’t see what was on their neighbour’s computer screen.

How this effect occurs isn’t clear, but it might be that we are influenced by subtle, unconscious cues such as a person’s body posture or breathing.

So instead of playing recordings of clinking cutlery and inane chatter at home to replicate the coffee shop effect, it might be more helpful to seek out an establishment filled with other people working hard – such as a student library.

If you’d prefer to work in the proximity of caffeine, it might be better to choose a cafe filled with people working, instead of one where the clientele is largely there to socialize.

Here are some reasons why people like to work from a Café:

1. It doesn’t feel like work.
2. It’s a nice break from the classroom routine.
3. You don’t have a place to work in.
4. Easy access to caffeine.
5. If you have a home office, you appreciate the fact that, in a cafe, there are no interruptions from your parents/roommates who rarely think they are interrupting you when they stick their head in your office and begin their conversation with something like “I’m not interrupting you, am I?”
6. It fills you with creativity.
7. Muffins.
8. You get a whole bunch of unexpected inputs that change your perspective for the moment (i.e. snatches of conversation, songs on the radio, odd posters on the wall).
9. It feels good being part of a community — even if the community disbands after your second cappuccino.
10. Old patterns are interrupted. New patterns emerge.
11. It’s like having a focus group at your beck and call. You can ask anyone for their opinion and they’ll give it.
12. If you go back to the same cafe again and again, you develop trusting relationships with some of the other regulars — sharing enthusiasm, feedback, and croissants.

Questions to discuss:

1. How often do you eat out?
2. Where do you usually go when you eat out?
3. How much do you usually pay when you eat out?
4. Who do you usually go with when you eat out?
5. Do you like western food? (Japanese, Thai, Italian)?
6. Can you name restaurants in this area that serve food from other countries?
7. Do you ever eat at McDonalds?
8. Did you enjoy eating out in other countries you have visited?
9. Which country had the best food?
10. Which foods did you enjoy the most?
11. Did you think the cost was high or low?
12. Do you know anyone who has owned a restaurant?
13. Have you ever worked in a restaurant?
14. Do you worry about calories and fat content when you eat out?
15. Would you send a dish back if it did not taste good or if you received the wrong food?
16. Do you ever leave a tip at a restaurant? How much?
17. In what ways have people's eating habits changed over the years?
18. How have your eating habits changed over the years?
19. Have your eating habits change this last year?
20. Who pays when you go out for dinner?
21. What's the worst experience you ever had at a restaurant?
22. What's the most disgusting food you ever ate in a restaurant?
23. Do you like eating at buffets? Why or why not?
24. Where was the best buffet you've ever eaten at?
25. Do you ever order out from a restaurant? What kind of foods?
26. Do you like to try new restaurants, or do you prefer to go to those you have already been to? Why?
27. Do you care what a restaurant looks like, or is the food the only thing you care about?
28. What types of take out food do you enjoy eating?
29. What do you think of children crying in a restaurant when you are trying to eat?
30. What do you think of people smoking in a restaurant when you are trying to eat?
31. Do you prefer fresh ingredients prepared by a chef as you order or do you prefer pre-cooked food?
32. What are your tips to choose the best restaurant/café?
33. Do you like working from the café?