French restaurant and food vocabulary: 290 words
Order with confidence — restaurant, drinks and food words (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese). This page lists 40 of them with their French translations, then lets you practise the full set in either direction with spaced repetition.
English to French: the first 40 words
| English | French | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| water | eau | The clear, tasteless liquid that fills rivers and seas and that people drink. |
| menu | menu | The printed list of dishes and drinks a place serves, with prices. |
| bill | addition | The total cost of a meal, not currency or a proposed law. |
| bread | pain | A staple food baked from flour and yeast, usually sliced into loaves. |
| wine | vin | An alcoholic drink made from fermented grapes, served red or white. |
| coffee | café | A hot dark drink brewed from roasted ground beans, often taken in the morning. |
| table | table | A piece of furniture with a flat top on legs, where you eat or work. |
| delicious | délicieux | Tasting extremely good. |
| restaurant | restaurant | A business where guests sit down and are served cooked meals. |
| waiter | serveur | A man who takes orders and brings food to guests at their seats. |
| fork | fourchette | An eating tool with prongs used to spear and lift food. |
| knife | couteau | A tool with a sharp blade used for cutting food. |
| spoon | cuillère | A small tool with a shallow bowl on a handle, used for soup or stirring. |
| plate | assiette | A flat round dish that food is served on. |
| glass | verre | For drinking from, not the material (window glass). |
| cup | tasse | A small vessel with a handle for drinking hot beverages. |
| napkin | serviette | Cloth or paper to wipe your mouth or hands at table. |
| breakfast | petit-déjeuner | The first meal of the day, eaten after waking. |
| lunch | déjeuner | The meal eaten in the middle of the day. |
| dinner | dîner | The meal eaten in the evening. |
| starter | entrée | First course of a meal, not someone who begins or a car engine component. |
| main course | plat principal | The largest, central dish of a meal, after the starter. |
| dessert | dessert | Sweet course after the main meal, not a sandy region. |
| meat | viande | The edible flesh of animals. |
| chicken | poulet | A common farm bird whose flesh is widely eaten. |
| beef | bœuf | Meat from cattle, not a complaint or dispute. |
| pork | porc | The flesh of a pig, eaten as food. |
| fish | poisson | As food on your plate, not the living animal in water. |
| seafood | fruits de mer | Edible shellfish and other creatures taken from the sea. |
| egg | œuf | The oval shell laid by a hen, cooked scrambled or boiled. |
| cheese | fromage | A solid food made from curdled milk, often yellow and sliced. |
| butter | beurre | A soft yellow fat churned from cream and spread on toast. |
| milk | lait | White liquid produced by cows and other mammals to feed their young, drunk by people. |
| sugar | sucre | Sweet white substance from cane or beet, stirred into coffee and used in baking. |
| salt | sel | White crystals from the sea or from mines, sprinkled on food to season it. |
| pepper | poivre | The spice ground from peppercorns, not the vegetable or the attack. |
| oil | huile | Greasy liquid pressed from olives or seeds, used for frying and dressing food. |
| rice | riz | Small white grains boiled as a staple food, very common in Asian cooking. |
| pasta | pâtes | Italian wheat-dough food shaped into strings or tubes and boiled before saucing. |
| soup | soupe | Hot liquid dish of broth with cooked ingredients, eaten with a spoon. |
250 more words in the full “Restaurant & Food” library, each aligned across seven languages and scheduled for you by spaced repetition. Add it to your account and start drilling English to French in one click.
What to watch out for in French
- 94 of these 290 words are near-identical in English and French (32%) —
menu,table,restaurant. Those are free; the value of drilling is in the rest. - Accents count. Answers are graded accent-sensitively, so you need
àâçéèêîïô— LinguaSwap shows a one-tap keypad for them while you type. - 290 words carry a usage note in the full library, for the cases where a direct translation would mislead you.
Practise French restaurant and food vocabulary
Words come back just before you would forget them, and every language direction is tracked separately.