Korean Restaurant Vocabulary 2

With Romanization

 

Korean Restaurant Vocabulary

 

With Romanization

Describing Food in Korean

 

Korean Restaurant Vocabulary

 Hello my fellow students. This video is going to give you some useful things to say in a Korean restaurant.

First of all restaurant in Korean is
shik-dang 식당

You could also use the English loan word
re-seu-to-rang 레스토랑 

Or you could say cook house
yo-rit-jip. 요릿집
요리 yori means cook, 집 jip means house

So what do you say when you enter the 식당 shik-dang?

You may ask for a table. Table in Korean is the same as English 테이블 te-i-beul.

Do you remember how to say please when you are requesting something? It is 주세요 Ju-se-yo

You can say 테이블 주세요 te-i-beul ju-se-yo

You will also want to tell the server how many people are in your group. Say We are X people. Or It is X people. Use the native Korean number and the counter and the polite form of the verb “is/am/are” If you have been watching my videos you might remember your native numbers, that’s these ones. The counter for people 명“myeong” and the polite form of is/am/are 이에요.

We are two people: du myeong I-e-yo 두 명이에요

We are 3 people se myeong I-e-yo 세 명이에요

We are four people ne myeong I-e-yo 네 명이에요

Literally translated this means X people are. Korean puts its words in a different order and often drops the pronoun.

Some other phrases you may find helpful are 

자리 있어요?" (jari isseoyo?), which means "Is there a seat available?"
자리=seat
있어요=exists

You can also ask 어디에 앉으면 될까요? (Where should I/we sit?)  eo-di-e an-jeu-myeon dwil-gga-yo
어디에=where
앉으면=sit
될까요=can I/would it be possible

So now you and your party are sitting at the table and you might want the server to bring you something. Do you remember how to say please when you are requesting something? We just went over it 주세요 ju-se-yo. Put 주세요 ju-se-yo at the end of the thing you want.

If you want a menu say 메뉴 주세요 me-nyu ju-se-yo. Menu in Korean is me-nyu.

Here’s some more things you may want them to bring you

Water 물 or a glass of water 물 한 잔  mul han jan mul means water, han means one and jan means glass

Tea 차

Cup 컵

Glass 잔/유리잔 

Fork 포크

Knife 나이프 regular dinner knife/ 칼 big sharp knife

Spoon 숟가락

Chopstick 젓가락

Plate 접시

Bowl 그릇 / 사발 / 대통-bamboo stick bowls. I’ve never seen these before. Aren’t they cool?

Soy sauce 간장

The bill/cheque 계산서

You can put the word ju-se-yo at the end of any of these words and you have formed the sentence “Please may I have ___”

You can also use ju-se-yo when you are making your order.

The name of the dish ju-se-yo

But wait! You may have questions about the food first.

You might have an allergy. You should let them know 

I am allergic to ___. ____에 알레르기가 있어요. 

Or there might be one ingredient you really don’t like

I don’t like___. Je-neun ____ an-jo-a-hae-yo. 저는 ____ 안조아해요. Remember the Korean word for like Joh-a-ha-da and remember how we make verbs negative by adding “an” to the front. And we conjugate into the simple present to get an-jo-a-hae-yo.

And because this is Korean food you will probably want to have a discussion about how spicy you want it. Korean food is often spicy.

Spicy in the infinitive form is 맵다 maep-da. That means to be spicy, but it will be more useful to you in the following forms

Mae-un 매운 and mae-wa-yo 매와요

Mae-un 매운is an adjective. Put it in front of a noun.
Spicy vegetable Mae-un yachae 매운 야채
spicy Cheetos maeun Cheetos 매운 치토스
spicy meat 매운 고기
spicy rice 매운 밥

Mae-wa-yo 매와요 means is spicy or are spicy. So you would say
the Cheetos are spicy Cheetos maewayo. 치토스 매와요
The meat is spicy go-gi maewayo.고기 매와요
This word has the is/are already in it. Mae-wa-yo 매와요 means is spicy or are spicy.

Now with the adjective form, mae-un 매운, let’s learn how to describe how spicy something is

You can say

Not spicy  an-mae-un 안매운

A little spicy 

조금 매운
Or 좀 매운 jom is short for jo-geum
Or 약간 매운yak-gan is more fancy and formal than jo-geum

Very spicy 아주 매운

Let’s make this into sentences. The word for a dish of food is 음식

How word you say 

Please give me a non spicy dish 안매운 음식 주세요 

Please give me a little bit spicy dish 조금 매운 음식 주세요

약간 매운 음식 주세요

Please give me a very spicy dish 아주 매운 음식 주세요

We would use the word for Please may I have, the same one we used earlier today. Juseyo

So Please give me a non spicy dish is 안매운 음식 (pause) juseyo

And Please give me a little bit spicy dish is

And Please give me a very spicy dish is 아주 매운 음식 주세요

Now you’ve ordered your food.

The server brings it to you

And she says

“많이 드세요”

Or she says

“맛있게 드세요”

What does that mean? Well basically it’s Korean for ‘bon apetit’

많이 드세요 literally means : Please eat a lot. man-hi means many or a lot. And deuseyo means please eat. But the classy honourable way of saying eat. As many of you may already know the Korean word for eat is usually meok-da, but there is another way of saying eat that sounds more elegant and respectful: 드시다 that is where deu-se-yo comes from.

And 맛있게 드세요

Well it has the fancy word for eat in it deuseyo and ma-shit-ge. This comes from the word for to be delicious ma-shit-da but it has been conjugated into an adverb: ‘deliciously’ . This is a word that doesn’t exist in English. It’s very useful though. Please eat it deliciously. I keep thinking about this phrase. When I’m being instructed to eat deliciously, I kind of think that is supposed to means that I should taste delicious, while I’m eating the food, right? But that’s not what they mean. They’re saying Please eat the delicious food. But still, maybe they should tell the food to please be eaten deliciously. I’m not the one who needs the instructions.

Anyway. Without deconstructing a popular phrase too much

When you server says Please eat a lot or Please eat deliciously

You can respond with thank you. I really hope you know thank you already: gomawayo or gamsahaeyo

And then say

잘 먹겠습니다 which means I will eat well. Jal might sound familiar from past lessons it means well and moek-get-seum-nida means “I will eat” or “I intend to eat” we’re using the presumptive future tense

Gomawayo jal meog-get-sem-nida

Now you start eating. You may want to describe the taste.

You can say it’s delicious: 맛있어요 /  맛있다

It’s good:좋아요

I like it:좋아해요

And we learned how to make verbs negative in my previous video. 

You can say it is not delicious 맛이 없어요

It’s not good an-joh-a-yo. 안좋아요.

I don’t like it. (Jeo-neun) an-joh-a-hae-yo 안 좋아해요. Since Joh-a is an adjective the an goes in front.

Now what about other tastes? I’m going to give these to you in the polite form of the simple present. So it means “it is adjective”

It is sweet dal-kom hae-yo

It is salty 짜요 jja-yo

It is sour 시큼해요shi-keum-hae-yo

It is bitter 써요sseo-yo

You can also describe the temperature of the food You might remember those words

It’s hot 뜨거워요 ddeu-geo-wo-yo

It’s Cold 식었어요 shik-eo-sseo-yo

You can describe the textures

It is chewy 질겨요 jil-gyeo-yo

It is soft 부드러워요 bu-deu-reo-wo-yo

It is crunchy 바삭해요 ba-sak-hae-yo

If you want to say it is very sweet, very hot, very crunchy You can add the word a-ju 아주 

It is very spicy a-ju mae-wo-yo

It is very sweet a-ju dal-kom-hae-yo say x2

It is very hot ddeu-geo-wo-yox2

It is very crunchyx2

If you want to say it is too ____adjective__ too spicy too hot too sweet too chewy You add the word neo-mu 너무

It is too spicy neo-mu mae-wo-yo say x2

It is too hot ddeu-geo-wo-yo

It is too sweet dal-kom hae-yo

It is too chewy  jil-gyeo-yo

This should be enough vocabulary to get you started. Check out the links in the description including a transcript, vocabulary charts, and merch store. Study hard, then off you go to the Korean restaurant. Have fun thanks for studying with me!