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Talking about tastes

Episode 250314 / 14 Mar 2025

(Photo: Getty)

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Introduction

Neil and Georgie have a real conversation in easy English about food and flavour. Learn to talk about why you like or dislike different foods.

Vocabulary

taste
the flavour of a food

sweet
a sugary taste, like chocolate

savoury
salty, the opposite of sweet, like bacon

sour
a sharp, sometimes unpleasant taste, like lemons

spicy
a hot taste, like chillies

bitter
a strong, sometime unpleasant flavour, like black coffee

Transcript

Georgie
Hello and welcome to Real Easy English, the podcast where we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I’m Georgie.

Neil
And I'm Neil. You can read along with this podcast because we have a transcript on our website and a worksheet too. It's all free. Go to bbclearningenglish.com.

Georgie
So Neil, how is your week going? Have you eaten anything tasty recently?

Neil
Yes I have. I had a very delicious lunch, actually.

Georgie
Good. Well, today we are talking about food and specifically the taste of a food. This is the flavour of something. So what it is like in your mouth.

Neil
So for example, lemons are sour. And sugary things like chocolate are sweet.

Georgie
So, Neil, what types of food do you like the taste of?

Neil
Well, I really like savoury food, actually. So the opposite of sweet. Things that have strong flavours, salty flavours and often spicy food.

Georgie
I have a sweet tooth. That means that I really like sweet foods like chocolate, biscuits, things like that.

Neil
Ice cream?

Georgie
Yeah. Love ice cream. So, do you not like the taste of sweet things?

Neil
I also really like the taste of sweet things. But I think if I had to choose, I'd choose a savoury snack rather than a sweet snack.

Georgie
OK, so we're opposites. Are there any types of foods that you hate the taste of?

Neil
Not really. I like most food, but there is one food that I don't like very much because it's just too strong, too bitter, is rocket. I really don't like rocket.

Georgie
Interesting. Rocket is a type of salad, isn't it?

Neil
Yeah, it's a leaf.

Georgie
Yeah.

Neil
How about you?

Georgie
I don't like sour things. So I told you I like sweet things, but desserts that are sour, for example, like a lemon tart or a lemon ice cream, I really don't like. I much prefer something with lots of sugar in it.

Neil
Are there any foods that you have never tried but you would like to try?

Georgie
I've never had insects. I know that in other countries they can be a common food and I've never tried insects and I would be interested in seeing what those taste like. What do you think they taste like?

Neil
Well, I have actually tried some ants before, from Colombia.

Georgie
Wow.

Neil
And I thought they were OK. They were fine. They were not my favourite kind of food, but they were OK.

Georgie
Were they salty?

Neil
They were a bit like nuts, actually, because they were kind of dried out, quite big and dried out.

Georgie
OK, interesting. So salty, not sweet?

Neil
No, but I think they had salt on them.

Georgie
What about you, Neil? Is there anything you would like to try that you have never tried?

Neil
Yeah. So, I really like fermented food. Things like sauerkraut and kimchi from Korea. I would like to try more fermented foods. I know that there are fermented foods from lots of different places in the world that I've never tried, so fermented food.

Georgie
Sounds good. Those fermented foods have quite a strong taste, don't they?

Neil
Yeah. Strong and sour. What we call tangy. I'd like to try some of those.

Georgie
And what about this question: is there a food you used to hate that you now like the taste of?

Neil
Not hate, but I think there are some foods that I wasn't sure about and then I got to like them. I think, when I went to Japan, there were lots of flavours that were very unfamiliar to me, and then once I understood these flavours, I really liked them.

Georgie
You got used to them.

Neil
I got used to them, yeah. How about you?

Georgie
I used to really hate nuts. But now I don't mind them so much. It wasn't the taste that I didn't like, it was the texture, how it feels when you crunch the food. I didn't like that, but it's fine now.

Neil
Texture is really important, isn't it, in food? Sometimes it is the texture rather than the flavour that you don't like or like.

Georgie
Exactly. Often people don't like mushrooms because of the texture, because they're a bit slimy.

Neil
Slimy is like a, like a snake.

Georgie
Yeah.

Neil
Except snakes, snakes are not actually slimy. They look slimy.

Georgie
Yeah.

Neil
Like it's wet. Basically, you don't like wet food.

Let's recap the vocabulary that we've talked about today. We had taste. Taste is the flavour of food in your mouth. And it's also a verb to taste. You taste something.

Georgie
We had sour, a sharp, sometimes unpleasant taste. For example, lemons taste sour.

Neil
Bitter is a strong, sometimes not very nice flavour. For example, very strong black coffee can be bitter.

Georgie
We talked about foods that are savoury or salty. This means they have a taste of salt. They are the opposite of sweet things, for example bacon.

Neil
And we also heard spicy. Spicy is sometimes also called hot, but it's not a hot temperature. It feels hot in your mouth, like when you eat a chilli.

Georgie
And that's it for this episode of Real Easy English. Remember, you can test what you've learned using a worksheet on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

Neil
We'll be back with more easy English conversations to help you learn. Thanks for joining us and goodbye.

Georgie
Goodbye.

 

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