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 | |
| menu | menu | |
| bill | addition | The total cost of a meal, not currency or a proposed law. |
| bread | pain | |
| wine | vin | |
| coffee | café | |
| table | table | |
| delicious | délicieux | |
| restaurant | restaurant | |
| waiter | serveur | |
| fork | fourchette | |
| knife | couteau | |
| spoon | cuillère | |
| plate | assiette | |
| glass | verre | For drinking from, not the material (window glass). |
| cup | tasse | |
| napkin | serviette | Cloth or paper to wipe your mouth or hands at table. |
| breakfast | petit-déjeuner | |
| lunch | déjeuner | |
| dinner | dîner | |
| starter | entrée | First course of a meal, not someone who begins or a car engine component. |
| main course | plat principal | |
| dessert | dessert | Sweet course after the main meal, not a sandy region. |
| meat | viande | |
| chicken | poulet | |
| beef | bœuf | Meat from cattle, not a complaint or dispute. |
| pork | porc | |
| fish | poisson | As food on your plate, not the living animal in water. |
| seafood | fruits de mer | |
| egg | œuf | |
| cheese | fromage | |
| butter | beurre | |
| milk | lait | |
| sugar | sucre | |
| salt | sel | |
| pepper | poivre | The spice ground from peppercorns, not the vegetable or the attack. |
| oil | huile | |
| rice | riz | |
| pasta | pâtes | |
| soup | soupe |
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. - 86 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.