| A．Having a meal. | B．Taking the order. | C．Looking at the menu. |
On a Thursday afternoon in March, an e-mail requirement came in to Ekiben restaurant in Baltimore—tempura broccoli (天妇罗西兰花) together with fresh herbs and sliced onion. The man who sent the e-mail didn’t actually want the food itself. He was writing on behalf of his mother-in-law, Rita, who liked the dish so much He went on to explain that she was now in the final stages of lung cancer at her home in Vermont and that he was hoping to get the recipe to make it for her there.
Steve Chu, one of the restaurant’s co-owners, read the e-mail and quickly replied with an alternative suggestion. “Your behavior is definitely considerate and touching,” he wrote “We’d like to meet you in Vermont and make it fresh for Rita.”
Brandon Jones, the son-in-law, was astonished. “I e-mailed back, saying, ‘You do know that this is Vermont we’re talking about, right?’” says Brandon. “But Steve responded, ‘No problem. You tell us the date, time, and location and we’ll be there.’”
For the past six years, every time Rita visited Baltimore, the first place she desired to go was Ekiben restaurant so she could enjoy broccoli, and I really wanted her to have it one more time,” Brandon says.
“She had always told us, ‘When I’m on my death bed, I long to have that broccoli’”, recalls Brandon.
That Friday after work, a day after receiving Brandon’s e-mail, Chu loaded his truck with a hot plate and a cooler filled with ingredients and then headed for Vermont.
As soon as Chu and his team pulled into the parking lot, they got to work. They pulled down the gate of the pickup, hooked (钩住) the hot plate to the truck’s power port, and started cooking and deep-frying. After neatly packing everything up, they knocked on their customer’s door and waited for the answer.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
As soon as Rita opened the door, she recognized the good smell.
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Several days later, Chu received an email with several photos from Brandon.
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3 . In the worsening economic environment, restaurants a returning to sharing menus to stop hard up customers from cutting back on starters and desserts.
Expenses in restaurants have fallen by 14 percent, from £ 25.38 to £ 21.80 per head, in part because customers are having main courses only and skipping starters and desserts, the research firm Lumina Intelligence has found. This is also hitting receipts from drinks, with the number of meals including alcohol falling from 38.5 percent to 33.9 percent. “To increase profit, restaurants are introducing sharing dishes across courses, including starter and dessert dishes, to encourage customers to spend more,” according to Lumina Intelligence.
Linden Stores, a restaurant that is owned by Laura Christie and her husband and was relocated to the village of Audlem from London in 2020, started a whole new menu of modern British food, with two people sharing seven dishes recently. And, for Christie, it was really a bolt out of the blue. “I wasn’t expecting it to be such a hit,” said Christie. “It was quite a new idea for people. We’re in a small village but it turned out we were breaking more boundaries than we’d thought with this sharing concept.”
Linden Stores is not alone in rethinking its menu to make sharing food more commonplace. A large number of restaurants are following this, among which is El Pastor, a group of Mexican restaurants in London. Actually, stealing your partner’s dessert is a time-honoured restaurant tradition, but restaurant owners are increasingly offering two spoons as a matter of course as sharing food become the latest way for the hospitality industry to fight the recession (经济萧条).
Sharing works because restaurants have become less formal, Christie believes. “It makes people feel like they’re getting more of an experience. Sharing food offers a delicious and exciting way to put together history, culture, and love. It helps save diners’ spend per head. It also helps with the efficiency of restaurants, because you know what you’re having to prepare and you need fewer people to deliver it because you know, ahead of time, what you’re doing.”
1. What does the author intend to do in paragraph 2?| A．Add some background information. | B．Describe people’s new food preference. |
| C．Introduce a new topic for discussion. | D．State restaurants’ effort to make a profit. |
| A．Christie had a clear vision of what she really wanted to do. |
| B．Christie was shocked by the reaction to sharing menus. |
| C．Christie was in a totally disturbed state of mind. |
| D．Christie found it hard to encourage innovation. |
| A．To explain the tradition of sharing food. | B．To prove the success of Linden Stores’ reform. |
| C．To present attempts at fighting the recession. | D．To show sharing menus’ popularity with restaurants. |
| A．Food is a vital element of culture. | B．Advance preparation makes a big difference. |
| C．Sharing menus is a win-win thing. | D．Food sharing helps people bond together closely. |
1. Where does the conversation probably take place?
| A．In the hotel bar. |
| B．In a hotel room. |
| C．At the hotel check-in desk. |
| A．Lloyds Bank. |
| B．Marriot Hotel. |
| C．Trask Restaurant. |
| A．All day. |
| B．From 6:00 p.m.until 2:00 a.m. |
| C．From 2:00 p.m.until midnight. |
| A．A salesperson. | B．A hotel clerk. | C．A waitress. |
1. Where are the speakers?
| A．At home. | B．In a hotel. | C．In a restaurant. |
| A．Three years ago. | B．Two years ago. | C．One year ago. |
| A．Some cookies. | B．A chocolate cake. | C．A strawberry ice cream. |
1. What did the woman order at last?
| A．A beef sandwich. | B．A hot dog. | C．Chicken breast. |
| A．In her car. | B．At the cashier’s desk. | C．In her office. |
| A．Change some money. | B．Take the food home. | C．Sit and eat his meal. |
| A．In a furniture store. | B．In a restaurant. | C．In a train station. |
