Small Talk Questions About Food

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  • Post last modified:02/05/2023
  • Post category:Real English
  • Reading time:14 mins read

Small talk questions about food that you could ask when you meet new people. Learn how to make small talk English, feel comfortable speaking English and sound like a native speaker.

Listen to the podcast Speak Better English with Harry or watch it on YouTube at Learn English with Harry.

Small talk about food

small talk questions about food

Hi there, this is teacher Harry and welcome back to English lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language so that you can improve your conversational language, your business English. Idioms, phrasal verbs, everything connected with English.

So what are we going to talk to you about today? Well, today, we’re going to talk about small talk. And small talk is a really important part of the English language. And in particular, we’re going to talk about small talk questions about food or small talk questions to do with food.

Why small talk is important in English?

Small talk is a really important part of the English language. Some people dismiss it a little bit as chit chat. Remember, when you use small talk, that’s the easiest way for you to get involved in English conversations.

So not only will it help you and ease you into the conversation, it will avoid those awkward silences that you might have.

In an elevator, you got stuck there, for example, or at the beginning of a meeting, when you’re waiting for somebody to arrive at one of your colleagues hasn’t arrived. So there’ll be generally a lot of small talk in those situations. Small talk will help you to present yourself a little bit friendlier, it will make you a little bit more acceptable to your colleagues, particularly new colleagues if you’ve moved jobs. So you don’t feel like the outsider.

And you sound much more like a native speaker.

Okay, so that’s the general overview of small talk and why it’s important.

So as I said to you, we’re going to look specifically at small talk questions about food. And as well as small talk is really important, food is important to all of us. We all like eating it, preparing it, and certainly talking about it. So when we have small talk conversations, food is one of the ideal topics. And usually, it centres around a number of particular areas. So I’ve broken this down into a few sections.

So I’ll take them one by one,

  • your favourite food
  • eating out
  • cooking at home
  • basic core meals
  • diets

Questions about favourite food

What’s your favourite dish?

Now, in English dish means a plate of food or something that somebody is prepared, it’s not just the dish or the plate that the food arrives on. So that can be sometimes a little bit confusing for non-native speakers. So what’s your favourite dish?

What’s your favourite meal?

Or just simply,

What do you like to eat?

So you can put it in any of those situations.

Are there any foods that you absolutely hate?

Are there any foods that you absolutely won’t eat?

So, again, you’re trying just to find out from people what their customs are. Or what their cultures are. What sort of food do they like. Or what food they don’t like.

Do you like trying new foods?

What’s the most recent food that you’ve tasted?

Have you had Vietnamese?

Have tried other Japanese styles?

Whatever it might be. You can broaden it out to include specific or just generally,

What have you eaten recently?

What new food have you tried recently? 

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Questions about eating out

Okay, so when, when we’re talking about eating out, that might be to do with places that are local. If you’re sharing offices with these people, and you’ve just joined them, you might want to know the places to eat locally for lunch, or perhaps for an early dinner. So you could ask questions like,

How often do you eat out?

Have you tried any new restaurants recently?

Or

What are the restaurants like around here?

Are there any nice small cafes? What are the prices like?

Are they good for lunches/dinners?

So you can get into it in much more detail as you go along. Once you feel comfortable about asking those questions. 

You could also ask,

Do you like fast food?

Obviously, people eat it, particularly if they’re in a hurry.

What type of fast food do you like?

What fast-food restaurants are available here?

Do you order food as a takeaway?

Have you tried some of those food delivery apps? 

And then you can talk about your experiences that were good. Or what most people like to talk about, some experience that was absolutely bad. The food was late. The food was cold or something strange happened. So people exchange their experiences in that way. 

small talk questions about food

Small talk questions about food. Better way to improve English vocabulary. Online English lessons at www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Click the link.

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Questions about cooking at home

A lot of people like to cook. A lot of people are really good at preparing food, particularly if they have the time.

They like to cook food, particularly when perhaps specific cultures from whichever country they happen to be from. So a lot of questions we can ask, are related to cooking at home.

So simply,

Are you a good cook?

Or

Who cooks in your house? Your partner or you?

Who does most of the cooking?

Do you share the cooking?

What’s your favourite dish to prepare?

Or what’s your favourite dish that you like to prepare as another way to say it.

What’s your cooking speciality? What do you really like?

What’s the key dish that you prepare that everybody talks about?

So what are you (well-)known for?

So lots of people have a particular speciality. It could be paella or it could be shepherd’s pie, in my case, whatever it might be.

What is the dish that really sets you apart from other people?

small talk questions about food

Small talk questions about food. Better way to improve English vocabulary. Online English lessons at www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Click the link.

Questions about basic core meals

Okay, so it comes down to the section and speaking particularly about just the three basic core meals of the day breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Do you usually skip breakfast?

Or

Do you bring breakfast with you and have it in the office?

That’s a very simple question. A lot of people grab a bite to eat on the way in. Off the tube or the train, drop into the local cafe, get the coffee and the breakfast bap or whatever it happens to be. Or they have something already on their desk waiting for them when they get there.

What time do you get up at if you have to have your breakfast before you you leave home?

What time do you usually have lunch?

What time do you usually go for lunch?

Where do you go for lunch around here?

I’m sick of sandwiches. Do you have any really good suggestions for lunches that you can prepare easily?

So all of those questions, small talk questions that will help you to fit into that conversation.

And finally,

What do you usually have for dinner?

Or

What time do you eat dinner?

Do you prepare dinner the day before?

Do you prepare dinner as we do enough for two/three days?

So general topics, conversational topics, questions that will be easy to ask, hopefully for you and easy to answer.

Speak better English with Harry - Episode 344

small talk questions about food

Questions about diets

And then finally, as I mentioned before, if we all as we do like food and we eat a little bit too much of it, particularly at certain times of the year, then we might like to talk about the diet. Different types of diets. So the questions you could ask relating to diet are

What diet are you on?

Do you ever go on diets?

Do you follow a special type of diet?

Are there foods you definitely leave out/include to make sure it’s a healthy diet?

Do you think diets are useful or not? Are they just fads?

A fad is something that’s here today gone tomorrow.

Is anyone here on the raw food diet?

So you can talk about the latest gimmick of a diet which would be in all the magazines and the internet and all the superstars are talking about them.

Okay, so lots of helpful and useful small talk questions about food.

As I said, small talk is a really, really important part of the English language.

It will help you to settle into a new job.

It will help you to make friends.

It will break the ice when you’re stuck in that elevator or before that business meeting.

If you want to talk about something to avoid that unhealthy silence.

It will make you fit into the organisation and you won’t feel such an outsider.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the experience of this particular lesson and you can join me again in the future and if you want to contact me, you can do so at wwww.englishlessonviaskype.com

More information

For more information on English grammar rules, English collocations and English idioms, check out the links below:

English idioms with AIR

Vocabulary related to DIET

You can always study English advanced level at Learning English with the BBC.

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