Describe a Meal You Really Enjoyed
A Band 8 model answer for the IELTS Part 2 meal cue card, with the sensory vocabulary that works and the food-related Part 3 questions examiners ask next.
Cue Card
Describe a meal you really enjoyed.
You should say:
- what the meal was
- where you ate it
- who you were with
And explain why you enjoyed it so much.
Food cards tempt candidates into recipe mode. Listing ingredients and cooking steps for ninety seconds is accurate and completely flat, and it gives the examiner almost nothing to assess beyond food nouns.
The meal is almost never the reason a meal was memorable. The answer below describes the food in about two sentences and the circumstances in everything else.
Model Answer
Band 8The meal I'd describe was a plate of grilled fish at a place that barely qualified as a restaurant, on the coast about four hours from where I live.
I'd been driving with a friend and we'd badly misjudged the timing, so we arrived somewhere at about four in the afternoon having eaten nothing since breakfast. The only place open was a shack near the harbour with three plastic tables outside and no menu. A woman came out, told us what she had, which was fish and bread and a tomato salad, and that was the entire choice.
The fish had been caught that morning and was cooked over charcoal with nothing on it except salt and half a lemon. I want to say it was the best fish I've eaten, but I'm suspicious of that judgement because I was extremely hungry and the sun was going down over the water and my friend and I had been talking about something important on the drive. Any one of those would improve a meal.
What I actually remember most isn't the taste, it's that we sat there for about three hours and nobody came to hurry us. The woman brought more bread twice without being asked. There was no music and no menu and no card machine. I've eaten in far better restaurants since and I couldn't tell you what I had in any of them, which I think says something about how much of a meal is the food and how much of it is everything around the food.
Why This Answer Works
- The food gets two sentences and the situation gets the rest. Charcoal, salt, and half a lemon is enough description, and the restraint is what makes it convincing.
- It doubts its own claim. Saying "I'm suspicious of that judgement" and then listing the reasons why shows genuine reasoning and is impossible to memorise convincingly.
- The absences carry the atmosphere. No music, no menu, no card machine, and nobody hurrying them. Describing what was missing is a more original move than adjectives about the food.
- The closing comparison to better restaurants answers the "why" bullet with evidence rather than assertion. Not being able to recall better meals proves the point without stating it as a lesson.
Key Phrases to Steal
“barely qualified as a restaurant”
Understatement that sets the scene in four words.
“we'd badly misjudged the timing”
Past perfect plus adverb. Explains the setup efficiently.
“I'm suspicious of that judgement”
Hedging a superlative. Sounds thoughtful rather than uncertain.
“nobody came to hurry us”
Simple past describing an absence. More vivid than "the service was relaxed".
“I couldn't tell you what I had”
Modal used for present inability to recall. Very natural spoken form.
Part 3 Follow-Up Questions
Do people in your country eat together as a family less than before?
Noticeably less, and I'd put most of it down to schedules rather than choice. When both parents work irregular hours and children have activities in the evening, finding a slot where everyone is in the same room takes real effort. Phones make it worse, though I'd say they're the second cause rather than the first. What I do see is families protecting one meal a week, usually Sunday, which suggests people know something is being lost and are defending a minimum.
Is fast food as bad as people say?
The nutrition is genuinely poor and I don't think there's much argument there. What gets discussed less is what fast food replaced, which for a lot of people working long shifts wasn't a home-cooked meal but nothing at all. It's cheap, quick, and predictable, and those are real advantages if your day has no gaps in it. So I'd rather see the argument focus on why so many people have no time to cook than on individuals making bad choices.
Why do people enjoy eating food from other countries?
Curiosity accounts for some of it, and status accounts for more than people admit, since knowing an unfamiliar cuisine signals that you've travelled or read about it. There's also a straightforward explanation, which is that another country's restaurant food is usually its most refined dishes, so you're comparing their best with your everyday. Most people's opinion of a foreign cuisine is formed from a very flattering sample.
Now Try It Out Loud
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