| SECRETS YOUR MENU WON’T TELL |
| Have you ever entered a restaurant wanting a salad, only to end up ordering the steak? Chances are, the owners had a hand in that result. Whether it is a high-end restaurant or a fast-food chain, the owners have clever ways to influence your choice. That soft background music? A Scottish study found that diners spent 23 percent more when slow music was played. The red walls? That color stimulates appetite. And then there’s the menu. We’ve annotated(作注解)a menu you might find at a typical medium-priced restaurant. Which of these tricks have you fallen for? | |
APPETIZER
Crispy Fried Mozzarella Sticks 12 THE FINE PRINT For some consumers, the dollar sign apparently screams, “Watch your wallet!” A Cornell University found that guests at one restaurant, given the number-only menu, spent significantly more than those who received a menu with prices showing a dollar sign.
Panko—Friend Calamari 9.95 THE FINE PRINT Prices ending with a 9, such as 9.99, “tend to signify value but not quality,” says the New York Times. Most restaurants round up; if not, they’ll go with. 95. Bourbon—Braised Beef Short Ribs 10.95 THE FINE PRINT Names with lots of consonants(辅音)that start with the lips and end in the throat(such as b)tend to copy the mouth movements of eating. These dishes were rated more flavorful than dishes with names featuring consonants that start from the back of the throat.(e.g., the c in corn), says a study from the University of Cologne in Germany. | MAIN COURSES Cheeseburger and Fries. 12 THE FINE PRINT “ Italic typeface(字体)conveys a perception of quality, ” reports the BBC. A study conducted by Swiss and German researchers found that a wine labeled with a difficult-to-read script was liked more by drinkers than the same wine carrying a label using a simple typeface.
Meat loaf with summer-whipped potatoes drenched in autumn root vegetables, winter squash, and who knows what else because by this point we’re just making things up to pad the dish’s name so you’ll notice it 14.95 THE FINE PRINT If boxes, huge fonts, and italic don’t catch your eye, how about a super-long dish name? As the restaurant-software company Toast points out on its blog, anything that is different will draw the eye. | ||
| DESSERT |
| Godiva Chocolate Brownie Sundae 6.95 THE FINE PRINT Brand names in menu items show a built-in trust and create a guarantee to diners that they will lover the dish. Sweet Georgia Peach Cobbler 5.95 THE FINE PRINT Restaurants use regional names to attract customers to order a particular dish, says Wansink. Want a good peach tart? Well, then, the peaches have to be from Georgia. | |
1. The restaurant owners influence the customers’ choices through_____________.
| A．fast — paced music in the restaurant | B．color pictures on the menu |
| C．bright decorations on the wall | D．nice menus for the customers |
| A．Best Chicken Burger $13.95 |
| B．Bourbon-Barbecued Beef Brisket 14.95 |
| C．Route 66 Banana Split 13.99 |
| D．Dove Chocolate Smoothies $9.99 |
| A．A general-interest magazine. | B．A linguistic scholarly journal. |
| C．A menu from a restaurant. | D．A guidebook on cooking. |
2 . Frato’s Pizza looks like a typical family restaurant, with its black-and-white checkered floor and red chairs. But in the kitchen, the cooks are cooking for four other restaurants at the same time.
There is, of course, the delicious pizza that customers have come to expect from Frato’s when they walk through the door. But there are also spicy chicken gyros for Halal Kitchen, barbecue chicken tenders for Tenderlicious, salmon grilled cheese for Cheesy Deliciousness and Butterfinger milkshakes for Heavenly Shakes, all of which can only be ordered through online sites Grubhub, DoorDash and UberEats.
Owner Michael Kudrna launched the four spin-offs (分店) earlier this year in a matter of weeks as he races to keep his Chicago-area business ahead of a growing trend: restaurants designed only for delivery or take-out.
Thousands of restaurants are experimenting with these virtual spin-offs tucked (隐藏) inside their own kitchens. Others are opening “ghost kitchens”, where all food is prepared to go.
Both concepts have come out to take advantage of the rising popularity of ordering out instead of dining in. The trend also speaks to the growing power of third-party delivery companies, which have transformed the way many people find restaurants and raised expectations for speed and convenience.
The $26.8 billion online ordering market is the fastest-growing source of restaurant sales in the United States, according to David Portalatin, a food industry adviser for The NPD group. Digital orders, while still accounting for just 5% of all restaurant orders, are growing by some 20% each year. Restaurant visits, meanwhile, are remaining mostly flat.
In this case, UberEats has helped launch 4,000 such virtual restaurants worldwide and about half of them are in the U.S. and Canada, according to Kristen Adamowski, head of Uber’s virtual restaurant program.
Grubhub and UberEats say their virtual restaurant programs help small businesses compete in this landscape. Both actively reach out to restaurants with suggestions for online spin-offs based on data collected from customer searches — extending their influence from how people get their food to what should go on the menu.
Virtual restaurants also have the obvious benefit of testing new concepts without taking on the high rent or hiring more staff, said Rick Carmac, head of restaurant management at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York.
1. What is the purpose of paragraphs 1-3?| A．To introduce a famous restaurant. | B．To list some examples of diverse food. |
| C．To add some background information. | D．To introduce the topic of the passage. |
| A．People find restaurants have changed. | B．Ordering out has become a trend. |
| C．Customers expect speed and convenience. | D．The delivery companies grow quickly. |
| A．Smooth. | B．Calm. | C．Inactive. | D．Boring. |
| A．The Rise of Virtual Restaurants | B．The Benefit of Online Restaurants |
| C．Restaurants Designed for Delivery | D．Booming Stores on the Internet |
3 . Please sit down and enjoy your meal. Just don’t talk about it.
These are the requirements at a popular dining party that is known as “silent dinners”. It encourages people who take part in the dining party not to speak for one to two hours and not to use electronic devices. Instead, the idea is to just on the food.
“Silent dinner parties are fast growing, ” said Honi Ryan, who has hosted 32 silent dinner parties in 11 cities across eight countries, including Germany, Australia and the United States. “The way we communicate is changing so fast that we need to stop and think about it. ”
According to a 2013 nationwide survey, restaurant noise came in second only to poor service among customer (顾客) complaints. And 19 percent of diners who took part in the survey said noise and crowds disturbed them most while eating out.
Though silent dinners may seem curious, the idea is not a new one. Yogis (瑜伽信徒) have long enjoyed silent meals as part of a deepened practice. In fact, it was a trip to a temple (寺庙) in India by a man that encouraged one Brooklyn restaurant recently to add a silent dinner to its event programming.
“We’ll make a small speech at the beginning of the meal to make sure everyone understands what is happening and ask them not to speak or use their mobile phones for at least an hour, ” said EAT Greenpoint owner Jordan Colon. And background music will be turned off, too.
“It’s funny; when I first opened EAT, I didn’t play music for some time and people had very different reactions (反映) to that,” said Colon. “Some people who come out to eat are ready to party, but it was so quiet without music. But I wanted to create an environment that makes you relaxed. ”
Although personal reactions to a silent dinner may be various, in general they are more likely to get into a lot of talk afterwards, said Ryan. “At the end of the night people always have a lot to say about silence. But the most reaction is that there is always a good laugh.”
1. The first paragraph is written to be a(n)____ .| A．Conclusion | B．Introduction |
| C．Argument | D．warning |
| A．leave before they finish eating | B．just pay attention to the food |
| C．use a mobile phone or listen to music | D．take electronic devices to the party |
| A．Silent meals help people live longer. |
| B．Yogis are the first to hold silent dinners. |
| C．More and more people like eating in silence. |
| D．The idea of eating in silence appeared long ago. |
| A．make people comfortable and relaxed | B．are hard to be accepted by most people |
| C．can help him to attract more customers | D．provide a chance to get to know others |
4 . “I know when to go out, and when to stay in…,” English rock star David Bowie once confidently sang in his hit single Modern Love. However, when it comes to matters of dining, the decision claimed (声称) by the singer-songwriter is more confusing than one can hope for. As for me, I agree that it is better to dine out than to stay in and order home delivery.
To begin, dining out is not simply the act of leaving our house and eating outside of it. When we set foot in a restaurant, we are immediately greeted not only by a server ready to seat us, but also by a flooding of senses. In other words, to dine out is to experience an atmosphere, one that is unique to each café and restaurant. Besides, going out for a meal can be a break from the hard boring work of domestic (家务) living. We could take it as an opportunity for self-care-a chance to treat ourselves by dressing up and arriving in style at a fancy restaurant.
Some food delivery app users would reason that it is too much of a hassle (麻烦) to dress up and go out to eat, and that it is much more convenient to dine at home. However, it is worth noting that we may not always receive our food in the most satisfactory condition when choosing home delivery. There is the risk of receiving food orders with missing items or even entirely wrong orders that cannot be sent back. Consequently, it might make more sense to make the trip out to dine out, rather than risk disappointment by ordering home delivery.
All in all, dining out can be a breath of fresh air to step outside the four walls of the house every once in a while and reap the many benefits of patronizing (光顾) a dining place.
1. Why does the author mention David Bowie?| A．To attract the readers. | B．To explain some rules. |
| C．To introduce the topic. | D．To support an argument. |
| A．It saves large amounts of time. |
| B．It helps us skip social interactions. |
| C．It improves our sense of achievement. |
| D．It offers us a short getaway from housework. |
| A．The delivery will be charged. | B．The orders may be sent by mistake. |
| C．It is inconveniently delivered. | D．The food doesn’t taste very delicious. |
| A．A speech. | B．An advertisement. | C．A survey report. | D．An announcement. |
5 . Cooking Robots Are Gaining Public Attention
The smart restaurant at the Main Media Center of Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games was once a hot topic during the 2022 Winter Olympics, attracting much attention online. In this restaurant, there was no chef or waiter to serve dishes. Chinese food, western food and cocktail were all prepared by robots. Customers could scan the QR code on the dining table to order, and the dishes would be transported to the table through the cloud rail system above, and then the cable would be lowered to put the dishes in front of the customer. Many Chinese and foreign journalists came to take pictures and videos of the process. Some videos shot by foreign journalists have gone viral on the Internet, making viewers around the world terribly amazed.
Yan Weixin, doctoral supervisor and associate researcher of the Robotics Institute, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, has been developing Chinese cuisine-cooking robots for over 17 years, and has developed more than 60 catering service robots. “Intelligent robot technology can operate according to a standardized Chinese food cooking process, which I believe has a promising prospect in application,” said Yan Weixin.
It’s quite accidental for Yan to start studying cooking robots. When he was choosing his doctoral research project in 2005, the one that he had planned to take was chosen by someone else. Yan’s supervisor made a joke in his office that an overweight man may be suitable for the development of cooking robots. Thanks to his words, by now, Yan has developed more than 60 catering service robots, including four types of functional components: pots and pans, other tools, firepower controllers and feeding tools, and has been granted nearly 30 patents.
Since the advent, these Chinese cuisine cooking robots have been soon used in restaurants and canteens, showing prominent advantages in using standardized cooking process, lowering labor costs, and reducing food safety risks through unmanned operation. And robots also help to inherit and spread Chinese cooking culture. “We have worked with a number of culinary masters to record their use of cooking ingredients and heat control, turn it into standardized recipes and then input them into the robot control systems so as to reproduce the culinary skills of the masters,” said Yan.
To the delight of this robot expert, a take-out company recently came to him to negotiate about cooperation in developing a series of special cooking robots so as to improve the cooking efficiency and reduce the labor costs. In the foreseeable future, the standardized Chinese food cooked by robots may reach thousands of households through take-out.
1. The underlined phrase “go viral” in the first paragraph probably means “________”.| A．gain popularity | B．become controversial |
| C．earn money | D．change for the better |
| A．It did not need any employees thanks to the advanced robotic technology. |
| B．With a smartphone in hand, customers could get what they wanted to eat in it. |
| C．The cooking robots in it were all developed by a researcher from Shanghai. |
| D．It is 17 years since the cooking robots applied in it was put into practical use. |
| A．Yan Weixin’s supervisor | B．Yan Weixin |
| C．Bing Dwen Dwen | D．a Chinse cuisine lover |
| A．Negative | B．Neutral | C．Supportive | D．Cautious |
6 . “I know when to go out, and when to stay in.”, English rock star David Bowie once confidently sang in his hit single. When it comes to consuming food, the decisiveness claimed by the singer-songwriter is hard to achieve. I disagree with the statement and argue it’s better to eat out than to order home delivery.
To begin with, when setting foot in a restaurant, we’re immediately greeted not only by a server ready to seat us, but by a flood of physical feelings—the eyes take in the internal decoration of the place, the nose breathes in the pleasant smell of expertly plated food and the ears pick up on competing sounds of customer chatter and attractive in-store music. To eat out is to experience an atmosphere unique to each restaurant. Something as special as that simply can’t be reproduced by ordering home delivery. Eating out is, without doubt, the more exciting and thus better choice.
Eating out becomes even more appealing when staying home proves too painful. Whether it is because we need a temporary fight from our family or that we simply want to spend some quality time outside with loved ones, going out for a meal can be a break from the hard labour of domestic living.
We could take it as an opportunity for self-care—to treat ourselves by dressing up, arriving in style at a fancy restaurant and ordering a slightly more luxurious meal to refresh our weary soul. Ordering home delivery would only contribute to feelings of being penned in while; eating out is an escape for the trapped individual. Food delivery app users reason it’s a trouble and less convenient to dress up and eat out.
However, it’s worth noting we may not always get our food in the most satisfactory condition when opting for home delivery. There’s a risk of receiving food orders with missing items or even entirely wrong orders that can’t be sent back. What we sacrifice for convenience might just wind up being inconvenient. Consequently, it makes more sense to eat out rather than risk disappointment by ordering home delivery.
1. What does the author mainly talk about?| A．Dining options. | B．Cuisine culture. |
| C．Consumption level. | D．Food categories. |
| A．Quality service. | B．Comfort and convenience. |
| C．Sensory enjoyment. | D．A reasonable mix of nutrition. |
| A．It’s quite pricey. | B．It may let consumers down. |
| C．It may cause food waste. | D．It’s not environmental-friendly. |
| A．By providing examples. | B．By following space order. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By analyzing mental processes. |
7 . 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. |
8 . How we eat is changing drastically. A few years back, food delivery was limited to pizzas and a few Chinese dishes. But the advanced technologies, user-friendly apps, and the internet have dramatically changed the restaurant industry and delivery platforms.
Convenience
It is a fact that all of us are having a very busy schedule. In many families, both of the partners are working and may not have enough time to cook food.
No pressure buying
Every business booms on promotion.
Growth of the restaurant industry
| A．Promotion does not always work. |
| B．Now everything is available within our reach. |
| C．The restaurant and grocery industry are no different. |
| D．Online food delivery brought them great convenience. |
| E．But with online shopping, we do not buy a product on our impulse. |
| F．Neither do they have time to go out and order their food from outside. |
| G．The restaurant industry has also been profiting from the booming food delivery services. |
9 . What will restaurants look like in the future? What would your dinner taste like if a robot cooked it? A robot restaurant in Tianjin may give you the answers.
Covering an area of over 400 square meters with a total of 112 seats, the X Future Restaurant is a robot restaurant opened in November 2018. The restaurant has amazed customers with its fully-automated technology, which covers every step of the dining experience, from ordering to cooking to serving the dishes and even taking payment.
Entering the restaurant, one can order dishes by simply scanning the QR codes on the table. There are over 40 choices of dishes. After taking the order, “robot cooks” prepare dishes using fixed time, temperature and ingredients designed by famous Chinese cooks.
“As the cooking is controlled by a computer system, the taste and quality of dishes can be good,”said Li Xiaokui, manager of the X Future Restaurant.
Robots also complete the delivery of dishes. Without following any designed route, the robot waiters serve meals thanks to automated driving technology, which helps each robot timely change its route when something is in the way.
These eye-catching technologies have received wide praise from customers. “The dishes taste surprisingly good. I couldn’t believe that they were made by robots, especially dishes that were difficult to cook”, one customer said. “The application of robots has increased our efficiency and cut down our costs,” Li said, “I think robot restaurants will develop fast and have a bright future.”
1. What do we know about the X Future Restaurant?| A．It covers over 112 square meters with 400 seats. |
| B．Customers could enjoy fully-automated services |
| C．Robot waiters deliver dishes following fixed routes. |
| D．Robot cooks design dishes by themselves. |
| A．They are prepared by human cooks. | B．They are not accepted by customers. |
| C．They are ordered by scanning QR codes. | D．They are not easy for robots to prepare. |
| A．Worried | B．Doubtful. | C．Puzzled. | D．Hopeful. |
| A．A Robot Restaurant Was Opened in Tianjin. | B．Robots Cook Delicious Dishes like Humans. |
| C．The X Future Restaurant Has Become Popular. | D．Robots Are Helpful in Many Restaurants. |
10 . A McDonald's restaurant has been rated one of the worst in the UK, out of 1,300 of the chain's outlets. The restaurant in question is in Kingswinford near Dudley, and Birmingham Live reports it has attracted a rating of just two.
Setting
As I walked into the restaurant itself. I noticed it was fairly busy for nearly 11：30 a. m. on a Tuesday in January. It looked clean and well organized. I didn't see any messy tables, or food left lying around. The outside was also tidy - no overflowing bins or rubbish dumped.
Service
There was no one serving behind the counter when I arrived at the restaurant, only those handing out the orders.
Having read reviews on TripAdvisor about items being missed from orders and cold food, I wasn't holding out too much hope.
Overall
So I headed to the Kingswinford branch full of fear of what might be in store after reading the overwhelmingly terrible reviews on TripAdvisor.
| A．But is it really that bad? |
| B．Would the restaurant be messy? |
| C．For first impressions, it didn't seem too bad. |
| D．But, I have to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. |
| E．So I had to use the self-service screens, which was no big issue. |
| F．Even the most latest reviews from December are very negative. |
| G．Yet within minutes, I was being presented with a large tray of food. |
