restaurant

restaurant — noun

1. a place where people pay to eat food that is cooked for them

1.nounA1
Definition

a place where people pay to eat food that is cooked for them

Example

Emily's family went to a small restaurant for dinner on Friday night.

go to a restaurant for [meal]

The restaurant on Main Street serves very good noodles and dumplings.

restaurant + verb: serves

Common collocations
  • at a restaurant
  • go to a restaurant
  • restaurant serves
  • Chinese restaurant / Italian restaurant
  • fancy restaurant
  • local restaurant
Synonyms
  • cafe

    a smaller, less formal place that mainly serves drinks and light meals, not full dinners

  • diner

    a cheap, informal restaurant, mostly used in American English

Grammar Patterns

a/an + restaurant

at/in a restaurant

restaurant + noun (restaurant owner, restaurant table)

Usage Note

Countable noun: use 'a restaurant' or 'the restaurant'. Common prepositions are 'at' (for eating there) and 'in' (for being inside the building).

Common Mistakes

I ate at kitchen last night.
I ate at a restaurant last night.
'kitchen' is a room in a home; 'restaurant' is a public place that serves paying customers.
Let's go to restaurant.
Let's go to a restaurant.
'restaurant' is a countable noun and needs a determiner like 'a' or 'the'.

Word family

Common collocations

Nouns

Phrases

  • go out to a restaurant
  • eat at a restaurant
  • work in a restaurant
  • run a restaurant

Prepositions

Etymology

FrenchEnglish

The word 'restaurant' comes from French, where it originally meant 'something that restores'. In the 1700s, the first Parisian restaurants sold a kind of meat broth believed to restore a person's health and energy. English speakers borrowed the word in the 1800s as more eating places opened across Europe.